[2] Tazewell County is part of the Bluefield, WV-VA Micropolitan Statistical Area.

Its economy was dependent on coal and iron of the Pocahontas Fields from the late 19th into the 20th century.

Tazewell County was long a hunting ground for various historic Native American tribes and their ancestral indigenous cultures.

[3] Among the tribes that occupied this area in historic times were the Lenape (Delaware), and the Iroquoian-speaking Cherokee and members of the Iroquois Confederacy.

In the spring of 1771, Thomas and John Witten established the first permanent settlement in Tazewell County at Crab Orchard.

During the early settlement period, many Scots-Irish settled through the Appalachian backcountry, including Tazewell.

After the Civil War, construction of railroads in southwestern Virginia enabled the development of coal and iron resources in the Clinch Valley.

Richlands had a boom economy in the early 1890s, and became a rougher place with young industrial workers and more saloons.

One of the most unusual areas is Burke's Garden, a bowl-shaped valley formed by the erosion of a doubly plunging anticline.

Tazewell County includes the headwaters of four watersheds, which are the Upper Clinch, Middle New, North Fork Holston, and Tug.

[19] In 2016, the department was criticized by the Freedom from Religion Foundation for having stickers saying "In God We Trust" on its cars.