Bridgeport State Park History

Bridgeport State Park provides recreational opportunities on the shore of the Columbia River reservoir created by the hydroelectric dam named for Nez Perce Chief Joseph. The park is located in a part of the Colville Indian Reservation (where Chief Joseph lived in exile after his defeat by the US Army in the 1877 Nez Perce War) that was removed from Indigenous trust ownership by a Presidential Proclamation and transferred to non-Indigenous homesteaders in the 1920s.

Ice Dams and Haystack Rocks

During the last Ice Age, the Okanogan Lobe of the ice cap advanced southward towards the Columbia River, scraping away bedrock in its path and plucking out boulders, which the ice carried along. Eventually, ice more than 1,000 feet thick covered today’s park. Periodically, the Columbia River was blocked by the ice, and water backed up upstream, creating the 1,500-foot deep Glacial Lake Columbia. When the lake broke through its ice dam, a giant flood poured down the valley.

When the ice finally melted, the giant boulders that had been carried along in the flowing ice stayed where they were positioned when the ice advance halted. These are today’s “haystack rocks,” or glacial erratics, giant basalt boulders found throughout Bridgeport State Park.

Indigenous Land

The park lies within the traditional territory of Interior Salish Indigenous people whose present-day descendants include members of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.

For thousands of years the banks of the Columbia River and the plateau lands that surround it have provided a habitat for a diverse community of life that forms the basis of their cultures. Shrub-steppe landscapes provide important root collection areas for biscuitroot (Lomatium canbyi) and bitterroot. Day-to-day interactions with the landscape are dictated by the changing seasons. Each season and the bounty it provides vary from year to year, making it critical to have intimate knowledge of the land.

Local Indigenous people were not represented at the Walla Walla Treaty Council held by Territorial Governor Isaac Stevens on June 9, 1855. Subsequently, an Executive Order of President Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1872, created the Columbia Reservation, covering the area bounded by the Columbia, Spokane and Pend Oreille Rivers. On July 1, 1872, the reservation was relocated to the area between the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers, and later reduced to the southern portion of that area, including today’s Bridgeport State Park. The Columbia Reservation was renamed the Colville Reservation.

In 1887, the US Congress passed the Dawes Act, which established individual land allotments for tribal members on reservation lands and authorized the sale of remaining reservation lands to non-Indigenous people or corporations. Much of the Colville Reservation land, including today’s Bridgeport State Park, was subsequently declared “excess” to the needs of the Indigenous residents of the Colville Reservation, and it was opened for settlement under federal land laws in 1916 by proclamation of President Woodrow Wilson.

Homesteads and Ranches

Government surveys had been completed in 1908 in anticipation of transferring ownership of parts of the Colville Reservation to non-Indigenous landowners. Most of the land in today’s Bridgeport State Park was “proved up” under terms of the Homestead Act, and a later amendment that allowed additional acreage for stock-raising, by ranchers Patrick Breslin and Henry Ebright between 1922 and 1927. Today’s park campground and boat launch are located on the original homestead of Henry and Vera Ebright, who married in 1922.

Construction of Chief Joseph Dam

In 1942, the US Bureau of Reclamation recommended building a dam at the mouth of Foster Creek on the Columbia River, to provide both hydroelectric power generation and irrigation to surrounding lands. In 1946, the US Congress authorized the US Army Corps of Engineers to build the dam, but with hydroelectric power as its primary purpose. The project was named to recognize Chief Joseph in 1948. Designed without a means of fish passage, the dam completely blocks the migration of salmon and other anadromous fish.

Construction of Chief Joseph Dam began in 1950 and finished in 1955. Its unique L-shaped design accommodates a 2,039-foot-long powerhouse and its 27 generators, installed in two phases, completed in 1961 and 1979. The powerhouse is the United States’ second largest producer of hydropower after Grand Coulee Dam, providing enough electricity to equal the power demand of the entire Seattle metropolitan area.

The 51-mile-long reservoir behind Chief Joseph Dam that forms a primary attraction in Bridgeport State Park was named Rufus Woods Lake, recognizing the publisher of the Wenatchee Daily World who relentlessly lobbied for hydroelectric and irrigation development in central Washington.

Chief Joseph Dam Reclamation Project      

As early as 1914, agriculture specialists promoted central Washington as ideally suited for irrigated orchard production, with The Encyclopedia of Practical Horticulture noting that “there is during the day a bright sunshine and at night a cool air, both of which tend to give color and flavor to the apple.”

In 1954, the US Congress authorized the Chief Joseph Dam Reclamation Project to provide water for area orchards. The legislation noted that irrigators would not be able to repay the total construction costs and allowed for power revenues from Chief Joseph Dam to subsidize the project.

Making a Park

The Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission (WSPRC) entered into a lease agreement with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on October 12, 1955, to manage a tract of USACE-owned land within the Chief Joseph Dam Project area for park purposes. The park provides recreational opportunities and access to the Rufus Woods Lake reservoir as a mitigation for the impacts caused by the construction and operation of Chief Joseph Dam.

The Breslin and Ebright homestead ranches were purchased by the WSPRC later in 1955 and 1956 to provide additional property adjoining the leased lands for park infrastructure and to provide a buffer between park facilities and surrounding agricultural lands.

In 1962, the WSPRC approved a sub-lease of park lands to the Lake Wood Golf Club to build and operate a nine-hole golf course on a portion of the lands leased from USACE. The proposal came with the recommendation of Governor Albert Rosellini. The course remained a park attraction until 2018.

The development of Bridgeport State Park occurred in several phases. The day-use area was developed by 1964. The park campground was built in stages, beginning in 1968, with expansion and upgrades in 1970 and 1987. A 60-acre tract of the land originally purchased by the WSPRC from the Ebright homestead was donated to the USACE in 1986 to facilitate the park improvements completed in 1987. All funding and contracting for park developments was provided by the US Army Corps of Engineers.