Jack's Creek Covered Bridge
Patrick County, near Woolwine. Built 1914, 48 ft. long. The only historic covered bridge remaining in Patrick County, also known as the Upper Covered Bridge.
Jack's Creek Covered Bridge, also called the Upper Covered Bridge, was designed by Walter G. Weaver of Woolwine and built in 1914 by Charlie Elam Vaughn of Buffalo Ridge to serve the congregation of Jack's Creek Primitive Baptist Church, for which it's named. It's built of oak on a queenpost truss, a simple design well suited to its modest 48-foot span across the Smith River.
A steel-beam bridge took over its road-crossing duty in 1932, but the covered bridge survived rather than being torn down. It was widened and reroofed in 1969, then given a full restoration by the Virginia Department of Highways in 1974 for about $4,550. Every June it becomes the centerpiece of the Patrick County Covered Bridge Festival. On September 29, 2015, flooding on the Smith River destroyed the nearby Bob White Covered Bridge, one county over the bridge's own crossing — Jack's Creek held.
The bridge was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 22, 1973, and is maintained today by Patrick County government as a pedestrian landmark on Jack's Creek Road (SR 615), just south of Woolwine and about 11 miles north of Stuart.
