Christmas Lighting Installation in Bridgeport, WV

Bridgeport sits at about 1,020 feet, and its nearest weather station is the airport a mile northeast of town, listed in the climate records as Clarksburg Benedum Airport. The 1991 to 2020 normals there are 0.7 inches of snow in November, 3.8 in December and 7.9 in January, for a seasonal total of 23.8 inches, with a January daily mean of 33.6 degrees.

That is a light winter by the standards of the Ohio Valley towns to the north. It also means something specific for a display: snow is a reflector, and without much of it the roofs here stay dark and wet through most of December.

Bridgeport's Light Up Night, put on by the Associated Businesses of Bridgeport, draws more than 50 businesses to Main Street and ends with a tree lighting at the Benedum Civic Center.

John Simpson, a trapper, entered the area in 1764 and gave his name to Simpson Creek, and settlers built a fort between 1771 and 1774. Simpson Creek Baptist Church, begun around 1770, was one of the first churches west of the Allegheny Mountains. The town was chartered in 1816, incorporated in 1887, and named for a bridge over the creek.

The Simpson Creek Covered Bridge is a 75 foot multiple kingpost truss built in 1881. A flood in July 1889 washed it out, and it was moved a half mile upstream.

A concrete bowstring arch bridge finished in 1924 carried handcarts between the Bridgeport Lamp Chimney Company's glass plant and a warehouse across the creek. Bridgeport Cemetery was formed in 1939 from older graveyards, and its oldest section, the Old Baptist Brick Church Graveyard, dates to 1770.

The Northwestern Virginia Turnpike opened through Bridgeport in 1838 and later became part of U.S. Route 50. The first recorded gristmill on Simpson Creek dates to between 1771 and 1787, and stagecoach service began in 1852.

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad arrived in the 1850s and made the town a shipping point for the regional cattle industry. Charles Pointe, a mixed-use community, and the White Oaks business park were added much later along Interstate 79, and the city keeps Deegan and Hinkle Lakes Park and Compton Park.