Dickenson County was formed in 1880 from parts of Wise, Russell, and Buchanan Counties. The county was named for William J. Dickenson, a legislator from Russell County who sponsored the bill in the House of Delegates that established it as the 100th county in Virginia. Dickenson has since been referred to as Virginia's baby county. Daniel Boone may have been the first white man to see the area. In 1767, he and two others traveled northward from the Yadkin River in North Carolina and reached the headwaters of the West (later called Russell) Fork of the Big Sandy River. Dickenson has one of the...