Erskine - 1845
The Erskine Covered Bridge was built by William Gordon in 1845 utilizing the Queenpost design. The structure is 39 feet 6 inches long and 11 feet 8 inches wide. The Erskine crosses Middle Wheeling Creek is owned and maintained by the county and is open to vehicle traffic.
The Erskine Bridge is the oldest bridge remaining in Washington County and has the typical vertical plank siding on the sides and portals, a tin-covered gable roof, and a plain box-like appearance. Painted barn red both inside and out, it has a deck of crosswise planking and two windows on each side with narrow eave openings. The structure rests on stone and mortar abutments reinforced with concrete and heavy timbers resting in a streambed. It also has short concrete wing walls on the north end and short stone and mortar wing walls on the south end. The Erskine sits one-tenth of a mile from the border of W. Virginia, making it the farthest west of any bridge in the State of Pennsylvania.
Its name comes from the Erskine family, who owned the land surrounding the bridge. Robert Erskine died in 1872 leaving his family stuck in debt. To help pay off the debt, the family leased a large part of the land to a mining company for a period of years during the 1880s. The Erskine Bridge survived both the strip mining and the floods of 1888. The bridge was reconstructed in 2006.
Of the 1,500 covered bridges that once stood in the state of Pennsylvania, as of 2019, approximately 200 remain.
Posted to the National Register of Historic Places on June 22, 1979.
Located at: N40 03.990 W80 30.974 - WGCB #38-63-15
Photographed in May of 2009.