The school was founded in 1895 as part of West Virginia's effort to keep up with an industrializing economy. Montgomery sat at the confluence of the Kanawha and a railroad spur into the New River coalfields - a perfect place to teach mining engineering, electrical engineering, and the practical sciences that ran the smokestack industries. Over time it picked up programs in arts and sciences, business, and nursing, and a Golden Bears athletic program that competed in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference from 1924-25 onward. In 1996 it became a regional campus of West Virginia University, and in 2007 an integrated division. Until the early 2000s, WVU Tech was a recognizable type of American institution: a small state engineering college bound up with the fortunes of a small industrial town.

Enrollment had been falling for years. By 2011 the financial picture was bleak enough that the state legislature passed the WVU Tech Revitalization Project, which required an outside assessment of the school's prospects. A report delivered in October of that year recommended a sweeping overhaul of administration - and eventually a move of the entire campus to Beckley, a larger city with better highway access and a population base that could support a college. In January 2015, WVU purchased the empty buildings of the former Mountain State University in downtown Beckley. WVU President E. Gordon Gee told reporters that Tech's future was very secure but declined to discuss relocation. On August 31 of that year, he recommended the move. The Board of Governors approved it unanimously the next day.

The relocation was phased over two years, with freshman courses moving first and the rest of the campus following by the fall of 2017. Then the Montgomery campus had to be dealt with. In April 2017, KVC Health Systems announced plans to lease-purchase the Fayette County side and convert it into a transitional college for young adults aging out of foster care - a promising second life for the engineering classrooms. The Kanawha County side was transferred to BridgeValley Community and Technical College. The David S. Long Alumni Center and the Tech Marina went to the city. The HiRise Residence Hall was demolished in June 2017. Then in 2019, KVC abandoned its plans, and most of the surplus property has sat unused since. The Old Main, with its National Register designation from 1980, still stands.

The new campus sits on 170 acres in downtown Beckley with 28 buildings, repurposed from the former Mountain State University. Enrollment climbed from 1,106 students in the fall of 2017 to 1,622 by the spring of 2019 - clear evidence that the gamble on a larger city paid off, at least in the short term. WVU Tech still calls itself an engineering school first, with the Leonard C. Nelson School of Engineering at its heart, all five engineering programs and computer science accredited by ABET. The Golden Bears still play. Notable alumni from across the institution's long history include basketball player Sedale Threatt, Christian baritone Squire Parsons, Treasurer of West Virginia Larry Pack, and gospel musician Ethel Caffie-Austin. The institution made it through. The town it left behind is still figuring out what comes next.