Covington: The Hump in the Bridge

Just west of Covington, Virginia, a covered wooden bridge arches across Dunlap Creek in a way no other surviving bridge in the United States does. The Humpback Covered Bridge, built in eighteen fifty-seven, rises four feet higher at its center than at either end, a distinctive upward curve that gives it its name and, apparently, its durability. It is the oldest remaining covered bridge in Virginia and the only surviving example anywhere in the country of this curved, arched design.

The bridge was part of the James River and Kanawha Turnpike, one of the major overland routes connecting the Virginia interior to the Shenandoah Valley and points west. Three earlier bridges had stood at this same crossing before it. The first was swept away in a flood in eighteen thirty-seven, the second in eighteen forty-two, and the third simply gave way in eighteen fifty-six. The fourth attempt, with its unusual hump, has outlasted them all by more than a hundred and sixty years. Engineers have debated why the curved design proved so resilient; the prevailing theory is that the arc distributes load stress more evenly than a flat span. Whatever the reason, the bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark in twenty twelve, the only Virginia bridge to hold that distinction.

Covington itself grew around industry rather than agriculture. The town was named in eighteen seventeen and eighteen in honor of General Leonard Covington, killed at the Battle of Chrysler's Farm during the War of eighteen twelve. For much of the nineteenth century it was a modest junction town, but in eighteen ninety-nine, the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company chose the site for a major mill, drawn by the timber resources of the surrounding Alleghenies and the water access provided by the Jackson River. The mill transformed the local economy, eventually becoming one of the larger paper operations in the region under successive corporate owners including Westvaco and later MeadWestvaco.

The combination of the mill's smokestacks and the Humpback Bridge's gentle wooden arc makes Covington a study in industrial and pre-industrial Virginia existing within a few miles of each other. One quietly humming with freight traffic since the age of turnpikes, the other drawing pulp from the surrounding mountains for over a century.