The Reverend J.R. Harrison, a Baptist minister, opened Southwest Virginia Institute on September 17, 1884, in Glade Spring, Virginia. His goal was concrete: bring higher education within reach of women whose families could not send them to Richmond or Charlottesville. Boarding students slept on the upper floors. The school grew faster than the building could hold it, and within a decade Harrison was moving the institution to Bristol. Classes resumed on the new campus on September 14, 1893. The name became Virginia Institute, then in 1908 Virginia Intermont College - Intermont because Holston Mountain, part of the Blue Ridge, rises beyond the campus, and the school sat between the heights. In 1910 it became the first two-year college accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

Through the 20th century Virginia Intermont built a reputation that lived in two unlikely places. The equestrian program collected more than 15 national championships across three different intercollegiate organizations. The Riding Center, six miles from main campus off Interstate 81, attracted students from across the country. The cross-country team, the Cobras, won the NAIA Men's National Championship three years running, from 2004 through 2006. The men were admitted in 1972 - VI became coeducational then, ending nearly nine decades as a women's college. Photography and equine studies became the signature majors. Alumni went on to win Pulitzers (Preston Gannaway, 2008) and seats in the Virginia House of Delegates.

The financial trouble started years before the end. The Southern Association warned VI in late 2011 about its finances. In December 2012 the warning became probation. In 2013 the accreditor recommended removing the college from membership entirely; VI won a court injunction and kept teaching, but the warning was clear. In January 2014 the board announced a merger with Webber International University in Florida. The merger collapsed in April. On May 4, 2014, at the graduation ceremony itself, the faculty president told the assembled graduates and families that the school would close. The next day President Clorisa Phillips resigned. Over $5 million in unpaid salaries to faculty and staff remained owed when the doors locked.

Bluefield College considered buying the campus and walked away after inspections revealed $20 million in deferred maintenance. In December 2016 the property sold at auction for $3.3 million to a Chinese-owned education company that announced plans to reopen as a college someday. The plans never materialized. The Main Hall - added to the National Register in 1984 - stood empty for eight years. When the fire started in the early morning of December 20, 2024, there was no working sprinkler system. The timber joists and floors burned fast. By dawn the buildings that had survived two world wars and the closure of their college were gone. King University, eight blocks away, still holds the academic transcripts. The hill where Intermont's daughters once walked to convocation is mostly bare ground now.