1923 view Terminal Island (facing north).
Note Henry Ford Bridge (center right) under construction
and the existing Union Pacific Railroad
wooden swing-span trestle bridge (in foreground)
Following the founding of the pueblo of Los Angeles in 1781, sea transportation played a relatively unimportant role in the regional economy. The greatest exception to this was the illegal hide and tallow trade, which operated in defiance of Spanish laws (laws designed to keep all trade under the control of the Spanish government). Foreign settlers and local rancheros skirted the Spanish law and exported cattle hides and imported general goods from the numerous non-Spanish ships plying the California coast.
With the entry of California into the United States in 1850 the number of ships calling in the state increased. In 1852, a small brig, the Mary Jane, was driven ashore under the bluffs of eastern San Pedro Bay in a gale and was subsequently converted into a crude wharf by August W. Timms. In 1858, Phineas Banning began operating a landing in New San Pedro, which would become the community of Wilmington. Wilmington soon eclisped Timms Wharf and became the center of the shipping industry in San Pedro Bay. Cargo and passengers moved between the harbor and Los Angeles in wagons and stagecoachs over little more than a rutted path.
Badger Ave. Bridge with Henry Ford Plant on left
In 1866, now State Senator Banning sponsored legislation to authorize, and the City and County of Los Angeles approved a bond measure to fund, a railroad linking Los Angeles and the harbor. Completed in 1869, the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad provided an efficient overland route linking Wilmington and Los Angeles. In order to provide a link between the County of Los Angeles and the nation, in 1873 both the City and County of Los Angeles gave their holdings in the Los Angeles & San Pedro Railroad to the Southern Pacific Railroad. In addition, the county provided a $602,000 subsidy to Southern Pacific. These actions insured that in 1876 the Southern Pacific would terminate their second transcontinental railroad in Los Angeles County.
The landform first known as Rattlesnake Island and later as Terminal Island began as a long, narrow strip of sand and silt swept down river and washed back inland by incoming waves to form the crescent-shaped island. Rattlesnake Island became part of the 43,119-acre San Pedro Rancho grant patented to Manuel Dominguez in 1858. The San Pedro Rancho, of which Rattlesnake Island was a part, hosted much of the illegal hide and tallow trade in the Spanish period.
Aerial view of closed bridge
In the late 1800s, a St. Louis group purchased Rattlesnake Island from the heirs of Manuel Dominguez for $250,000. The group sought to reduce Southern Pacific's growing monopoly over railroad shipping to the San Pedro area. The group later passed control of the island to the Los Angeles Terminal Railroad Company, which in turn set about laying tracks down the east side of the Los Angeles River in 1887, and then across to the piece of land they renamed Terminal Island. Eventually, the island formed the western terminus of the San Pedro, Los Angeles, & Salt Lake Railroad Company's rail route from Salt Lake City, Utah, to Los Angeles.
Once in place, the route, now under the control of the Los Angeles & Salt Lake Railroad (the successor to the San Pedro, Los Angeles, & Salt Lake Railroad Company and which would be eventually acquired by the Union Pacific Railroad), proved worthy competition to the Southern Pacific lines. Berth construction slowly improved along with the development of the greater Los Angeles area during the early 20th century. By the 1920s, companies such as Hammond Lumber and Crescent Wharf & Warehouse established their leadership in the field of lumber importation to Terminal Island. Construction during the 1920s along the eastern side of the Main Channel included at least five municipal transit sheds, petroleum stations, and an airport for land and seaplanes. Fish Harbor, located at the southwestern end of Terminal Island, was an important unloading and packing point for the fishing industry. While the majority of Terminal Island remained relatively undeveloped, the improvements to its southeast portion resulted in the need to improve the railroad and road crossings and led the way for the construction of the Henry Ford Bridge in 1924.
About the time the construction of the Henry Ford Bridge took place in 1924, the nation's favored mode of transportation changed as well. During the 1920s, Henry Ford's mass-produced automobile gained popularity in the oil-producing Los Angeles region to a point where by 1925, the city of Los Angeles had one automobile for every three people.
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