The collection contains items, which belonged to or were collected by Harold C. Cox during his time as a student at Virginia Agriculture and Mechanical College and Polytechnic Institute from 1922-1926, and his continued experiences with the university as alumnus, primarily from the 1970s and 1980s.

The photograph collection at Special Collections and University Archives consists primarily of historical photographs of Virginia Tech, dating back to the 1890s. The collection is also home to historic images of Blacksburg, Montgomery County, the New River Valley, and Southwest Virginia in general. A photograph collection of faculty and staff from the university is maintained separately.

The collection contains 102 letters from Joseph F. Ware to his wife, Susie, in Blacksburg, Virginia, while he was serving overseas during and after World War I. The other significant portion of this collection contains nearly 200 photographs.

This collection contains two scrapbooks of photographs and ephemera compiled by DeWitt Clinton Wolfe, Jr., a 1921 graduate of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a member of the VPI Corps of Cadets. The materials document Wolfe's experiences as a student in the Cadet Corps from about 1919 to 1921, including sporting events, camping excursions, "rat parades" and as a trumpet player in the Cadet Corps band. The collection also contains a CD with selected scanned photographs from the albums.