Covered Bridges at Shepherdstown

Covered Bridge #1 at Shepherdstown

The Virginia and Maryland Bridge Company, owners of the Blackford Ferry that crossed the Potomac River at Shepherdstown, discontinued the ferry service in 1850 and built a 600 foot covered bridge in its place.¹ The bridge connected Shepherdstown, West Virginia (Virginia until the Civil War years) to the road leading to Sharpsburg, Maryland.

The first covered bridge at Shepherdstown was one of many victims of the Civil War. Confederate soldiers burned over a hundred wooden bridges and destoyed other bridges and railroad property from Point of Rocks to Cumberland, Maryland. After blowing up the railroad bridge across the Potomac at Harpers Ferry in June of 1861, General Stonewall Jackson's mission was to continue the destruction of all bridges north of Harpers Ferry. He sent a detachment to Shepherdstown and burned down the multi-spanned highway bridge.²

Covered Bridge #2 at Shepherdstown

It wasn't until 1871 that a second bridge across the Potomac was built at Shepherdstown. John Wood built the bridge at the same location as the first. That one was destroyed in the great flood of 1889, the Johnstown flood, and was replaced by an iron bridge.³

¹ Thomas F. Hahn, Towpath Guide to The C & O Canal, Georgetown (Tidewater) to Cumberland. (American Canal & Transportation Center: 1996), p.125-6.

² Chester G. Hearn, Six Years of Hell, Harpers Ferry During the Civil War. (Louisiana State University Press: Baton Rouge, LA: 1999), p.75.

³ Thomas F. Hahn, Towpath Guide to The C & O Canal, Georgetown (Tidewater) to Cumberland. (American Canal & Transportation Center: 1996), p.126.

Piers that supported the Shepherdstown Covered Bridge can still be seen in the Potomac River. Photo courtesy of Richard Edling.