About the City:
Bridgeport, Washington--the Gateway to the mighty Columbia River system. In the earlier days the town was known as Westfield. In 1889 Mr. J. Covert and a group of investors purchased the entire township and renamed it for their hometown of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Due to the river rapids, river steamers could go no further. Because of this Bridgeport was the staging area for supplies. Now a quiet community of 2250, Bridgeport is still a great place to raise a family. There are 51 miles of fishing and hunting upstream from the dam and 30 miles downstream to Wells Dam. There is more park square footage per resident than any city in Washington State.

History:
Bridgeport is a town that has made it through hard times before. Cycles of boom and bust began with the gold strikes of the 1880s, when Bridgeport was known as Westfield. Chinese immigrants set up mining camps in the area to sluice gold from the banks of the Columbia.

As the gold ran dry, many residents turned to agriculture for their livings. Horses and cattle thrived on the wild bunch grasses, fruit production began to take root, and the fertile plateaus above the town supported wheat fields, which in turn supplied the local flour mill which shipped its output down the Columbia by steamboat.

In 1892, the town was renamed Bridgeport when a development company from Bridgeport, Conn., purchased the town site for $60,000. By the time the town was incorporated in 1910, its population had grown to 500 and its business district was flourishing with a bank, a flour mill and a saw mill, three general stores, two butcher shops, a ferry operation and the largest hotel between Seattle and Spokane, just to name a few ventures.