[2] In 1882, the community—originally called "Walker's Mill"—was renamed for Schuyler George Walker, local mill operator, and the area's first postmaster for the local post office branch of the old United States Post Office Department (today's United States Postal Service after 1971).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the community became a small industrial center with the establishment of a stone cutting plant for the area quarries of the Alberene Stone Company, which took the native and acid-resistant soapstone and cut, then milled the rock into flat slab table tops for medical labs, hospitals and high school science classrooms.

The economic hardships of the Great Depression of the 1930s essentially destroyed this industry and the area never fully recovered.

He is best known for the long-running Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS-TV) network's television series The Waltons, which stories and scripts were based on his experiences of growing up the eldest child of a large rural family in Great Depression-era America of the 1930s and subsequent Second World War era of the early 1940s.

Famous Country music singer Jimmy Fortune (born 1955) of nearby Nelson County, Virginia, participated in the event.