The Philippi Covered Bridge is 285 and a half feet long today (originally 312 feet) and 26 feet wide. Chenoweth built it as a 'double-barreled' bridge - two lanes side by side under a single roof, separated by a center truss - one of very few such configurations to survive in the United States. The design incorporates the 'Long' Burr Arch Truss, a combination of straight kingpost trusses with a great curved arch that distributes the load. The original structure rested on three massive sandstone piers built by Emmett J. O'Brien. Total construction cost: $12,180.68. It served the Beverly-Fairmont Turnpike, a vital nineteenth-century route through the mountains connecting Chenoweth's hometown to the railroad junction at Fairmont.

On June 3, 1861, the bridge entered the Civil War. Confederate troops camped in Philippi used it overnight. Union forces under Colonels Kelley and Dumont attacked at dawn after marching all night through rain. The retreating Confederates ran across the bridge into the hills - the famously panicked 'Philippi Races.' The Union held the structure afterward and used it as a barracks. By some reckonings, this was the first land battle of the Civil War, making the Philippi bridge the first bridge captured by either side. In April and May 1863, during Confederate raids on the B&O Railroad west of Cumberland, General William E. Jones ordered the bridge burned along with the covered span at Rowlesburg. Elder Joshua S. Corder, a local Southern sympathizer, talked the raiders out of it. Both bridges survived.

The bridge has been severely damaged at least seven times over its long life. In 1934, the wood deck was replaced with steel-reinforced concrete, and two more piers were added beneath - five total - to handle motorized traffic. An external walkway was added for pedestrians. The bridge survived flooding in 1985 but very nearly ended in 1989. On February 2 of that year, a gasoline tanker truck overfilled an underground tank at a nearby filling station. Gasoline ran down into the bridge. A passing car backfired. The covered bridge caught fire and was virtually destroyed. A $1.4 million reconstruction followed, directed by West Virginia University professor and bridge historian Emory Kemp. The crews replaced the damaged yellow poplar supports and rebuilt the rounded double arch entrances. The new roof shingles were poplar, painted red. The horizontal wooden siding went back. The bridge reopened on September 16, 1991. Today, the original burnt trusses and supports are still visible if you look closely while driving through.

The Philippi Covered Bridge is the oldest and longest covered bridge in West Virginia, and the only covered bridge anywhere on the United States Numbered Highway System - traffic on U.S. Route 250 still crosses it. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. A local legend, often cheerfully retold, holds that Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis met secretly inside the bridge late in the war to discuss peace terms, witnessed by a small boy. It did not happen. But the story has the right kind of weight for a bridge that survived a war, a fire, several floods, and the entire twentieth century. The Philippi bridge is, in many ways, what is left when American history bumps along long enough that nostalgia decides to keep it. The original architect Chenoweth would probably nod. The man could prove a thing worked by standing on it.