Early connections to Terminal Island The San Pedro, Los Angeles and Utah Railroad was incorporated on October 8, 1887 with the goal to build a line from
Rattlesnake Island (renamed Terminal Island by 1897) on the east side of
San Pedro Bay to Utah. The same "English syndicate" which had purchased
Catalina Island was said to have secured the right-of-way between Los Angeles and Rattlesnake Island in 1889, with plans to have the rail line operated by the
Santa Fe. However, the
Los Angeles Terminal Railway, which had purchased Rattlesnake Island and the right-of-way by 1890, was the first to build tracks on the island, completing the line along the western and northern sides of the island to Long Beach on November 7, 1891, as the start of a planned transcontinental route. The line included a pile bridge spanning the mouth of the
Los Angeles River, near the present site of the
Gerald Desmond Bridge. Since the trestle bridge effectively blocked marine traffic from passing through the east end of Cerritos Slough, the
War Department ordered the Salt Lake Railroad to demolish it in 1906. Although a tunnel was proposed as a replacement in February 1907, the Salt Lake had already applied to replace the fixed trestle span with a drawbridge in September 1906. The location for the new drawbridge was set in May 1907, and the first piles were driven in December 1907. The bridge was completed in 1908 as a Scherzer Rolling Lift Bridge. As port traffic increased, plans to widen Cerritos Slough to were advanced in 1914, connecting the
Port of Los Angeles to the
Port of Long Beach. However, the widened channel would require the newly-renamed
Salt Lake Railroad to move its tracks on Terminal Island and remove its 1908 bridge. After several years of negotiation, a compromise was reached. After widening, the waterway was renamed Cerritos Channel. As part of the compromise, in exchange for Salt Lake moving its tracks and ceding land to accommodate the widened channel, the city took on obligations to reconstruct wharves and build a replacement bridge. That replacement bridge was completed in 1924 as the
Badger Avenue Bridge (later renamed to Henry Ford Bridge), a double-leaf bascule bridge wide enough to accommodate two railroad tracks and two lanes for road traffic. The 1908 bridge was moved to Washington State in 1934, where it is still in use as a bridge for
BNSF Railway over the
Cowlitz River near its mouth at
Longview. Despite these early rail bridges, a road bridge was keenly desired by residents of Terminal Island, who had asked for a wagon bridge in 1894 and again in 1906.
1948 Schuyler Heim vertical-lift bridge 1924 also saw work begin on a
Naval Air Base San Pedro at
Terminal Island. Port traffic continued to increase and the United States Navy began to expand its presence on Terminal Island in the early 1940s, including an expanded air base. Expansion plans for the Navy called for more workers than could be accommodated over the Henry Ford Bridge, so the Navy commissioned a new road bridge in 1941. Construction on the bridge began in 1946. The Chief Engineer for the project until October 1947 was H. E. Wilson. The bridge was named in honor of
Commodore Schuyler Franklin Heim, who was in command of the Naval Air Station on Terminal Island in 1942. The state of California took over operation of the bridge from the city of Los Angeles in 1964. Although the vertical clearance is being reduced from with the 1948 lift bridge raised to with the replacement fixed bridge, the lift bridge was already unable to accommodate large cargo ship traffic. Work on the replacement bridge began in 2011 and was finished in September 2020. ==Design==