The privately owned bridge carried people, horses, wagons, and automobiles; it also supported two large water pipelines along its sides.

The bridge opened East Wenatchee and the rest of Douglas County to apple orchard development.

The bridge was the brainchild of W. T. Clark, one of the builders of the Highline Canal, a major irrigation project to water the apple orchards in the valley.

It was financed in part by James J. Hill (1838–1916), of the Great Northern Railway (which arrived in Wenatchee in 1892).

In its second year of operation the canal firm that owned it decided to start charging tolls.

The state purchased the bridge despite the state-employed consultant's opinion "that the ugliness of the structure is very apparent" (Dorpat), despite defects in the timber floor and concrete piers, and despite leaks in the waterpipes.

Today, it remains as a footbridge on the Apple Capital Recreation Loop Trail and still has the old pipeline running across it.

On February 28, 1935, citizens voted, 48 in favor and 46 against, to incorporate the town of East Wenatchee.

From its foundation in agriculture, the region's economy has diversified to include year-round tourism and a variety of other industries.

Having taken off from Misawa, Japan, pilots Clyde Pangborn and Hugh Herndon Jr. safely belly-landed their Bellanca airplane, Miss Veedol, on a nearby airstrip known then as Fancher Field.

In honor of this pioneering flight, East Wenatchee's airport is called Pangborn Memorial Airport, the Pangborn-Herndon Memorial Site, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is nearby, and Miss Veedol's propeller is displayed in the Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center.

On that date, while digging in an orchard just east of the city, farmworkers accidentally discovered a cache of 11,000-year-old Clovis points and other artifacts, left there by Pleistocene hunters.

The East Wenatchee Clovis Site, near Pangborn Airport,[6] was explored in two subsequent archaeological digs in 1988 and 1990, was closed to science by the landowner after protests by local Native American tribes.

Wheat and other grain are also grown on farms in the outlying areas near East Wenatchee.