Bridgeport: Hub of OpportunityStory and Photography by Bobbi and Steve Olson |
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SOUTH OF BRIDGEPORT, Courthouse Rock and Jail Rock rise above the North Platte River. The giant monuments were a gathering point for wagon trains bound for Oregon, California and Utah. Pony Express riders skirted their wide bases in a race to deliver mail; and coaches mercilessly jostled their passengers along the Sidney-Black Hills Trail that passed here.
By 1900, iron horses replaced wagon trains, and the community of Bridgeport
was born as a station for the Burlington Railroad. Still today, these rocks
mark that Bridgeport is a hub of opportunity with five highways and three railroads
intersecting this Panhandle town of 1,600 residents.
There are plenty of cars with local plates lining both sides of Bridgeport’s Main Street, which doubles as Highway 385. With a street full of retail shops and service businesses, there’s hardly an empty storefront on this main drag. It’s easy to see that the local residents help their town by shopping here.
Jack Berg, Bridgeport’s mayor,
owns TruValue hardware store on Main Street. Berg’s store offers a little
of everything: hardware, gifts, costume jewelry, furniture and appliances. Curiously,
the sign outside says “Gambles,” a chain of stores that closed years
ago.
Berg’s dad started the Gambles
store in Bridgeport in 1934. Telephone the store today and you’ll likely
hear Jack on the other end answer, “Gambles.” Traditions are hard
to change, so the sign remains.
We spoke with Berg while sitting on
a couch in the middle of his store. The store was busy, as it generally is,
despite Wal-Mart and other larger retail stores in nearby cities. He agreed,
“People in Bridgeport support local stores.”
He pointed out that Bridgeport has
two grocery stores with competitive prices and three gas stations. The town
was home to three banks in the early 1900s. When times got leaner, the number
dropped to one. Agriculture is doing well again, and it’s back up to three.
Farm and ranch
Cash crops like hay, corn, wheat and
sugar beets help keep the downtown full of shoppers but when two farm supply
chain stores, Country General and Wheelers, went into bankruptcy in the 1990s,
the closings threatened to leave a hole in the needs of Bridgeport’s agriculture
community. Several local businesspeople put their heads together for a solution.
One of these savvy businessmen was
Owen Palm, who speculated the reason for the failure of the Michigan-based stores.
“They were disconnected from the needs of western Nebraska customers,”
he said.
You can’t get much more connected
to Bridgeport than Palm and the other local businesspeople, so they purchased
four of the stores, and before the bankruptcy proceedings were complete, they
bought four more. Today, Palm and his partners are operating 11 stores called
“The Mercantile” in Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota and Wyoming.
The stores employ 180 people and are doing well. To make something work, they
found, sometimes you have to take it into your own hands.
Palm’s other company, 21st Century
Equipment, also is a major business with 185 employees in Bridgeport and area
towns. His company sells and fixes farm machinery.
To keep up on training, John Deere
requires mechanics and technicians to regularly attend “John Deere University”
in Wichita, Kan. Training would take Palm’s employees away for four days,
with two of those days as travel. It was time-consuming and costly. Instead
of going to John Deere, he proposed having John Deere come to them – John
Deere agreed.
The pilot partnership program between
21st Century and John Deere is up and running now in Bridgeport, in a formerly
vacant International Harvester building on Main Street where 45 technicians
can gather at a time and be trained – by instructors from Wichita. Next
door, a huge attached garage can house four large combines for additional training.
Even better, the training center – which includes a kitchen and meeting
rooms – is available to Bridgeport for community functions.
The new ethanol plant on the east edge
of town is another collaborative effort aimed at improving Bridgeport. Pete
Lapaseotes, one of the investors in that project, owns a feedlot on the west
side of town where a large pencil drawing of his father, Connie, and two of
Connie’s friends hangs in his office. “They were always looking
for a new deal,” Lapaseotes said with warmth and admiration for the trio.
Like Connie, Pete looks for opportunities
to grow Bridgeport and his business.
We walked down to a feed bunk together
and Lapaseotes scooped up a handful of ground corn product that he feeds to
his cattle. He purchases and ships it from out of state semi loads at a time.
Once the new ethanol plant is operational, Lapaseotes will be able to buy the
feed locally and save $15-20 a ton in freight costs alone.
Dave Kramer, president and founding
member of Bridgeport Ethanol, said the plant will be “one of the most
efficient plants in the world,” thanks to leading-edge technology.
Unlike other ethanol facilities with
200-300 investors, the Bridgeport plant has fewer than 50 investors, most of
whom are ranchers in the area.
Many residents in Bridgeport had their
doubts the plant would ever open. At the Meadowlark Cafe, a group of retirees
seemed to echo the sentiments heard around town. “The ethanol plant will
be great for the community. It will help all businesses because they buy food,
they buy gas, etc.” They ended with a popular qualifier, “If they
ever get it running.”
The plant is scheduled to begin operating this fall.