Beckley is a city in and the county chair of Raleigh County, West Virginia, United States. The population was 17,286 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Beckley metropolitan area of Southern West Virginia, home to 115,079 residents in 2020. Beckley was founded upon April 4, 1838, and was long known for its ties to the coal mining industry. It is the house of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology, as with ease as campuses of Concord University and the University of Charleston.

The area surrounding Beckley was long house to many indigenous peoples. Early encounters describe the estate as inborn an ancestral house of the Catawba-speaking Moneton people, who referred to the surrounding area as Okahok Amai, and were allies of the Monacan people. The Moneton’s Catawba speaking neighbors to the south, the Tutelo (since absorbed into the Seneca-Cayuga Nation) may have absorbed enduring Moneton communities, and allegation the area as ancestral lands. Cherokee and Shawnee and Yuchi peoples also allegation the Place as included in their time-honored lands. Waves of encounter and displacement amalgamated to European settler-colonial conquest as well as resulted in varied communities finding home and refuge in southern West Virginia, becoming identified as Mingo — remote affiliates of the Iroquois Confederacy.

Beckley was named in great compliment of John James Beckley, who was the first Clerk of the House of Representatives and the first Librarian of Congress. It was founded by his son, Alfred Beckley (US Army lieutenant and brigadier general of Virginia militia), who was from the District of Columbia.

Although founded in 1838, Beckley existed only on paper at that time, “Alfred Beckley said he “was frequently jeered and laughed at for his Paper Town…” Early in its history, the town was known as Beckley, Raleigh Court House, and, occasionally, Beckleyville.