Crime Scene & Biohazard Cleanup Near North Wise Wise, VA

Wise is an incorporated town and the county seat of Wise County in far southwestern Virginia, set on the Appalachian Plateau in the heart of the state's coalfields.

The town was originally incorporated as Gladeville in 1874 and took its current name in 1924, honoring Henry A. Wise, the last Virginia governor before the Civil War and the governor in office when Wise County was formed in 1856.

Wise County itself was formed in 1856 from parts of Lee, Scott and Russell counties, and the town of Wise grew up as its commercial, legal and cultural center.

Wise had a population of 2,970 at the 2020 census, spread over about 3.1 square miles of land.

Wise is home to the University of Virginia's College at Wise (UVA Wise), founded in 1954 as Clinch Valley College and still the only four-year public college in far southwestern Virginia.

UVA Wise opened on the former Wise County poor farm — locally nicknamed 'Poor Farm University' — after local advocates known as the 'Three Wise Men' persuaded the University of Virginia to plant a branch in the coalfields, welcoming its first class of about 100 freshmen in September 1954.

The college became the University of Virginia's College at Wise on July 1, 1999, and its 396-acre campus of native Gladeville sandstone and modern buildings sits just outside the town.

Three Main Street buildings in Wise are on the National Register of Historic Places: the Wise County Courthouse (listed 1981), the Colonial Hotel, now the Inn at Wise (1991), and the E. M. Fulton House (2006).

The coal and lumber industries have shaped life in Wise since the late 1800s, according to the town's wayside exhibits on Virginia's Crooked Road heritage music trail.

During the Civil War the community, then Gladeville, served for a time in 1862 as headquarters for Confederate General Humphrey Marshall's operations in Southwest Virginia.