276 Area Code – Bristol, Virginia: Location, Time Zone & History

Bristol earned the title "Birthplace of Country Music" from Congress in 1998, commemorating the 1927 Bristol Sessions recordings that first captured the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers, a milestone still celebrated along the 250-mile Crooked Road heritage music trail running through the region. Three years after that congressional recognition, on September 1, 2001, the area code 276 was carved out of area code 540 to relieve number exhaustion in southwestern Virginia, covering the New River Valley and the Virginia side of the Bristol Tri-Cities.

A more recent milestone came in 2021, when the local exchange 988, previously an ordinary central office code within 276, was retired from seven-digit dialing after being designated nationwide as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline number; ten-digit dialing became mandatory across the region by October 24 of that year.

The region is home to roughly 553,000 people in the Eastern time zone, with Galax, Martinsville, Norton, Wytheville, and Abingdon served alongside Bristol. Its economy has historically drawn on coal mining, furniture manufacturing, textiles and apparel, agriculture, and fabricated metals and machinery, alongside a growing tourism and ecotourism sector tied to the region's Appalachian heritage.