Large-scale mining occurred in a number of mines along Price Mountain for about 40 years. But the mines were never consistently profitable, due to the relatively thin and deep coal veins. A United Mine Workers strike in 1934 closed the large Merrimac mine permanently. Other small Price Mountain mines followed suit, but not before a December 1938 underground gas explosion killed four miners. Thereafter, the mining equipment and all the company houses were dismantled and removed, and many people moved away.
Today there's little trace of the Price Mountain mines.
Only memories remain. After World War II, a California company searched for other natural resources such as oil and natural gas on Price Mountain's summit by digging a deep well. The prospect yielded nothing except a name for modern-day Oilwell Road, which runs up mountain. In 1952, Roanoke industrialist J.B. Fishburn donated a 1,200-acre piece of land that covers most of Price Mountain's western end to Virginia Tech. Now the land is covered with woods and used regularly by the university's forestry students as an outdoor laboratory.