The Steamboat Enterprise, the fourth steamboat built in Western Pennsylvania, was built at Bridgeport in 1814 with an engine designed by Daniel French and under the command of Captain Henry M. Shreve. It steamed to New Orleans in the fall of 1814 and returned in June 1815, becoming the first steamboat to ascend the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. Bridgeport was also a boatbuilding center where flatboats and keelboats were built for trade and downriver migration from 1780 to 1820, and from 1825 to 1903 it was a leading steamboat construction center. More than 700 steamboats were built in Bridgeport and West Brownsville and completed in Brownsville.
