Bridgeport, Texas

Texas

A man drilling for water here in 1882 hit a vein of coal instead, and it set the town's course for the next fifty years.

historicalengineering

Charles Cates was looking for water. What he found in 1882 was a vein of bituminous coal. The Wise County Coal Company formed around it, and for decades it was one of the state's leading coal producers. Natural gas and petroleum eventually undercut it, and the mines closed in 1929. The town itself began with a bridge. In February of 1860, William H. Hunt got a charter to build a crossing over the West Fork of the Trinity River. The wooden bridge carried part of the Butterfield Overland Mail stage route, but only for a few months, from August of 1860 to March of the following year. Then the Civil War began, the mail route went unused, and the abandoned bridge rotted and fell into the river. An iron bridge replaced it in 1873, a post office opened, and Bridgeport was formally a town. In 2009 the Texas Legislature named it the Stagecoach Capital of Texas.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Its future was assured in 1882 when Charles Cates discovered a vein of bituminous coal while drilling for water.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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