Covered bridges, such as the Bob White Covered Bridge over the Smith River near Woolwine in Patrick County, are a distinctly American building form. Hundreds of these structures formerly adorned rural byways across the country. Most have disappeared, but those that remain excite an intensity of sentiment given to few other types of structures. Covered bridges are a rarity in Virginia; at the time of the listing of the Bob White Covered Bridge in the registers, Patrick County had two of the handful remaining. Later than most, this bridge was constructed in 1920-21 under the direction of Walter Weaver, whose family assisted in the endeavor. The bridge is an eighty-foot span of heavy oak timber framing. The exterior is covered in board and batten, while the interior has diagonal sheathing. At the time of listing, the Bob White Covered Bridge was one of two in the state that still served Virginia’s highway system. Later transferred to county ownership, the bridge ceased to serve vehicular traffic, and was kept as an object of interest beside a modern crossing.

At the time of listing in the registers, the 1920-1921 bridge was one of just eleven covered bridges then extant in Virginia. In September 2015, the Bob White Covered Bridge was destroyed by a flash flood, although poured concrete abutments remain in place.  The sole extant covered bridge in Patrick County is the Jack’s Creek Covered Bridge, and the Meems Bottom Bridge in Shenandoah County remains the sole covered bridge in Virginia still in active use as part of the state’s transportation system.