Blacksburg, VA news and local guide

In the mid-1600s the mountains and their Native inhabitants blocked English settlement west of the Alleghenies. Abraham Wood, commander of Fort Henry at present Petersburg, sent several expeditions west, and in 1671 the explorers Batts and Fallam found a passage and reached the site of Blacksburg, following Stroubles Creek through today's town and Virginia Tech campus to what they named Wood's River. They found the area home to the Siouan-speaking Monacan and Moneton, and on September 17, 1671, claimed the river's drainage for King Charles II. Around 1700 Seneca warriors of the Iroquois Confederacy overran the region, and after the 1744 Treaty of Lancaster the Seneca and the colonists disputed whether the new boundary was the Alleghenies or the Ohio River, with the Blacksburg site inside the disputed zone.

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By the 1740s the Wood's River Land Company, represented by Colonel James Patton, held a large tract in southwest Virginia, sold to settlers as a reward for military service, and the Draper and Ingles families built homes at Draper's Meadow by 1748, between today's campus and Hethwood. In July 1755, during the French and Indian War, Shawnee warriors armed by France attacked the outpost of about twenty settlers, killing about four and carrying five captive to Kentucky, among them Mary Draper Ingles, who later escaped. At William Black's petition, the legislature established the town on January 13, 1798, on the 38.75-acre tract he had laid out in 16 square blocks, and that August 4 he deeded it to the trustees. The town was named for him. Sources Wikipedia: Blacksburg, Virginia