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bly bad roads was automobilehell for motorists making their annual trek south for sea and sun in Florida or gambling in New Orleans.
Road improvements in Rappahannock County began in earnest in 1910, driven by the need for better highways to get farm products to market. Over the next decade, a macadam road was completed starting at Chester Gap, descending to Flint Hill, thence to Washington via Fodderstack Road, onward to Sperryville, and then to the Culpeper County line by 1920. A macadam road consisted of thin layers of tightly packed crushed rock and stone, topped with sand or gravel fines (finely crushed stone), all rolled so as to keep out water, snow, and ice.
Obviously streams, such as the Covington River, had to be crossed by something more upto-date than a ford.
And so, the Covington River Bridge joined the road improvement effort on , Thursday, November 2, 1916. On that day, the County’s Board of Supervisors (BOS) voted unanimously to appropriate “$650 , toward the construction of a concrete highway bridge over the find of the Covington River at Rediviva.” Then the BOS at their April 5,1917 meeting (the United States entered World War I the next day) voted $650 more for the bridge, but stipulated it was to be 12-feet wide and not 15-feet wide as recommended by the Virginia State Highway Commission. No reason was given. It may have been cheaper to build a more narrow bridge, or maybe the county did not like being told what to do, or since the macadamized road was 12-feet wide, why have a wider bridge. A marking on the east end of the bridge seems to indicate it was finished on October 12,1917. A shifting of road funds at the BOS meeting of April 3, 1919, suggests a total cost of $1,300 fin* the bridge.
In 1918, the First World War was over, times were booming, the Good Roads Movement was in full swing, and Virginia finally laid put a State Highway System. That is how the old Sperryville-Rappahannock [River] Turnpike entered Virginia’s primary road system and received a number, Y\21.
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