Wheeling’s Main Street Covered Bridge 1816 -1832

WHEELING’S MAIN STREET COVERED BRIDGE 1816-1832
Wheeling’s first bridge
At Wheeling, Virginia (West Virginia) in the winter of 1815-1816, while the steamboat Washington, then under construction, awaited its steam machinery from Brownsville, Pennsylvania, its builder, Henry Miller Shreve had George White, White’s Lead Carpenter Samuel Wait, and their carpenters build a covered bridge. This was Wheeling’s first bridge, likely financed by Peter Yarnall, Noah Linsly and Noah Zane. The covered bridge, built across Wheeling Creek to the south bank was a great convenience to the patrons of Jackson’s Grain Mill. Before the bridge, a Lea-board ferry operated occasionally to transport large wagons filled with grain. This Main Street Covered bridge served Wheeling until it was carried away by an ice gorge in the winter of 1832. In 1832-33, the first “stone bridge” over the creek was constructed at a cost of over twenty-thousand dollars. The present day Main Street Bridge begun in 1891, replaced the 1833 Main Street Bridge.