Dry Fork is home to Bland County's only African American community. It is located at the head of Dry Fork Valley and nestles between East River and Buckhorn Mountains. It was settled in the latter part of the 19th century by families from Bland, Pulaski, Tazewell, Floyd and Franklin counties. They came looking for land to farm and a quiet place to raise their families. Land was freedom and the one sure guarantee of freedom. The land had not been cleared and was purchased for a dollar an acre. In 1880 M. H. Ferguson and A.J. Tynes were among the first families to move up Dry Fork. A few years later Powell Saunders came from the Willis section of Floyd County and built a sawmill that was powered by a steam engine.

Dry Fork Creek also ran a grain mill. A one room school house was established soon after. Land was donated for the Tynes Chapel AME church at the turn of the century, but the congregation met in the school house until construction was completed. MacDaniel Ferguson and others were sent to the Christiansburg Institute and worked his way to an education and came back and raised a family.Dry Fork soon became a thriving community with the Showalter, Charlton, Gore, Hogan, Blair, Robinson, and other families arriving. There was trade across East River Mountain to Ingleside, W.V. and to the Round Bottom section of Bland County over Buckhorn Mountain. Agriculture produce and lumber was taken to Rocky Gap and shipped out on the railroad. There were several small stores that supplied the needs of the residents. Heavy snows would often cut the community off from the rest of the world. When the school house closed in the early 1950's segregation in Virginia forced the community to send their children to a black school in Tazewell County. Race relations in the Rocky Gap section have always been good. In fact Andrew Ferguson was the barber in Rocky Gap for many decades. It was one of the few barbershops in the South with a black barber and a white shoe shine boy. Integration was accomplished peacefully in the 1960's at the Rocky Gap Combined School.

Over the years Dry Fork, like most rural communities, has suffered the problem of losing its young people to the job opportunities of urban areas. Many that have moved away are now returning and building homes on the land that once attracted their ancestors.