Lake Bridgeport (Texas)

Texas

The dam here went up as one piece of a much larger scheme to tame the Trinity River, begun the year the Depression started.

engineeringfishinghistorical

Work on the dam started in 1929 and finished in 1931, at an estimated cost of two million dollars. It was never meant to stand alone. The reservoir behind it began life as Bridgeport Reservoir, one component of a plan to canalize the Trinity River and stop the West Fork from flooding. Damming that West Fork made the lake, which spreads across Wise and Jack Counties and feeds downstream into Eagle Mountain Lake. The Tarrant Regional Water District owns it. The water it holds back does four jobs at once: flood control, sales to homes and businesses, irrigation, and recreation. Anglers come for largemouth bass, crappie, hybrid bass, and sand bass. Boat ramps and marinas sit at points around the shore, and at the northern end there's a county park with camping and day-use grounds.

Wayside reads this to you as you drive past, timed to arrive before the place does. Plan a route through here.

What this was written from
Lake Bridgeport has its origins as Bridgeport Reservoir, a component of the Trinity River canalization plan to prevent flooding along the West Fork of the Trinity River. Construction of the lake's dam began in 1929 and was completed in 1931. The estimated cost to complete the project was $2 million.

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

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