The municipality lies on the Deutsche Edelsteinstraße (“German Gem Road”) in the southern Hunsrück between the Idar Forest in the north and the town of Idar-Oberstein in the south.

Also belonging to Kempfeld are the hamlet of Katzenloch and the outlying homesteads of Auf dem Steinberg, Herrenflur and Wildenburg.

[4] In a copy of the Liber Aureus (St. Maximin's Abbey's “Golden Book”), which came into being about 1200, Kempfeld had its first documentary mention.

Matched by the extensive network of paths was relatively heavy settlement in individual homesteads, which belonged mostly to local people, but in almost every municipality in the Kempfeld area, traces of habitation from Roman times (roughly 50 BC to AD 375) can be found.

Only nineteen years later, in 1282, came another partition between members of the house's main line: Konrad kept Schmidtburg while Gottfried got Kyrburg and the paternal rights to Bruchweiler, Kempfeld, Breitenthal and Oberhosenbach.

In 1319, the communal high jurisdiction over Raide (Veitsrodt), Horbure (Herborn), Bruchwilre (Bruchweiler), Schuren (Schauren), Kempvelt (Kempfeld), Huisinbach (Niederhosenbach), Breidendail (Breitenthal) and three villages that have since vanished, Dudinsbach (Diedesbach), Vockinhusen (Fuckenhausen) and Dyfenbach, was documented.

So that Friedrich could not get the inheritance to which he was entitled by lawful, written documents, the late count had arranged for Archbishop of Trier Baldwin to be enfeoffed with the Schmidtburg (castle) and its appurtenances, and also Bundenbach.

After the 1574 boundary-defining Grenzweistum (a Weistum – cognate with English wisdom – was a legal pronouncement issued by men learned in law in the Middle Ages and early modern times), not only Kempfeld's municipal area along with the Wildenburg belonged to the High Court of Wildenburg, but so did Asbach, Herborn, Veitsrodt, the woods of Wenzel and Vitsruth, the now vanished village of Fuckenhausen and part of Kirschweiler.

As Ruppenthal rode through the village late one evening with his riflemen, the night watchman apparently blew the wrong signal on his horn.

As punishment, the watchman was made to practise the right signal the whole night long, which almost drove the Kempfelders to uncontainable fury.

Ruppenthal flew into such a rage over the peasants’ supposed stubbornness that without further ado he had his riflemen lock them all up in the church.

This, however, only angered the imprisoned men's wives and, arming themselves with brooms and threshing flails, they then drove Ruppenthal out of the village.

The mount of three, a charge called a Dreiberg in German heraldry, symbolizes the Wildenburgkopf – a mountain – itself, which is under conservational protection.

The lion on the sinister (armsbearer's left, viewer's right) side is a reference to the village's former allegiance to the Waldgraviate-Rhinegraviate.

[7] The following are listed buildings or sites in Rhineland-Palatinate’s Directory of Cultural Monuments:[8] Also found in the municipality are an open game reserve on the Wildenburger Kopf, and Germany's only gemstone garden on Schulstraße.