Bridgeport: Named for a Covered Bridge, Birthplace of an Oil Wildcatter

Bridgeport, West Virginia, takes its name from a covered bridge built across Simpson Creek in eighteen oh three, the first bridge in Harrison County. The creek itself was named for a man named John Simpson who explored the area in seventeen sixty-four. Settlement followed in the early seventeen seventies, and the town was chartered in eighteen sixteen.

Bridgeport's most consequential native son may be Michael Late Benedum, born here in eighteen sixty-nine, who became one of the most successful oil wildcatters in American history. Operating across West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, and abroad, Benedum made a fortune hunting petroleum in fields others had written off, earning him the nickname the Great Wildcatter. He eventually established the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation, named for his son, one of the largest private foundations in the country, which continues to fund education and economic development across Appalachia.

Today Bridgeport is among the fastest-growing and most prosperous cities in West Virginia, sitting alongside the technology and energy corridor that has developed around the Harrison County region.