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History of the Bridgeport Grain, Inc. Facility *
The Bridgeport Grain, Inc. facility has a long and interesting history in Lawrence County Agriculture.
The first elevator/mill was located south of the present CSX rail line and was operated by Mr. Carl Cooper in the early 1900's. In the 1920's Mr. Cooper decided to build a "state of the art" grain elevator and feed mill complete with a built-in grain leg and 15,000 bushels of overhead storage space at the current location of the Bridgeport Grain, Inc. facilitiy on the north side of the CSX (then B & O) tracks.
The Depression caused Mr. Cooper to fall on difficult financial times in the early 1030's, and he was forced to relinquish ownership of the elevator. During World War II wheat was milled into flour and loaded into rail cars on the B & O siding.
Baltic Mills from Vincennes owned the elevator during the 1950's and installed the outside grain leg (currently the east leg) and built a larger dump pit. In the late 1950's Rich-Law Service Company purchased the facility from Baltic Mills and installed larger feed mill equipment and constructed the two 20,000 bushel concrete grain storage silos west of the main concrete elevator. Rich-Law operated the facility as both a grain elevator and feed mill from the late 1950's until the mid 1970's. In the mid 1970's Rich-Law quit purchasing grain but continued to operate it as a feed mill until the mid 1980's when Rich-Law consolidated its Bridgeport feed operations with its feed mill at West Liberty.
The facility sat idle for a couple of years before being purchased by Art Eubank, Jr. in 1986 and used for family and tenant grain storage until 1988 when it was incorporated as Bridgeport Grain, Inc. It received its Grain Dealer's License and began purchasing grain and selling Supersweet feed on September 20, 1988. Natalie Yockey Puntney was the first General Manager, Dennis Cogdill was the Feed Salesman, Omer Houghtaling was the Facility Operator, and Bill Fletcher was the first Semi-Driver.
In 1990 the main dump pit was expanded, and the grain leg was upgraded from approximately 1,000 bushels per hour to 9,000 bushels per hour. A 1,200 bushels per hour continuous flow grain dryer was installed, the interior grain handling system was modernized, and 80,000 bushels of storage were added. In 1993 a 15-car rail siding was installed along with a 20,000 bushels per hour rail scale, a second dump pit with a 15,000 bushels per hour leg was installed, and a 100,000 bushel grain bin was added.
In 1998 a 12'X70' semi-scale and an automatic grain probe were added, a new traffic pattern was instituted to better accomodate increased grain truck traffic, and the Office was moved east across Main Street into the former Abel Building. The next phase in the history of Bridgeport Grain, Inc. will be the addition of more storage capacity to handle the increased volume of grain receipts.
* This history is true and correct to the best of our knowledge.
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