San Pedro Bay is an inlet on the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

coast of southern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. It is the site of the

Port of Los Angeles The Port of Los Angeles is a seaport managed by the Los Angeles Harbor Department, a unit of the City of Los Angeles. It occupies of land and water with of waterfront and adjoins the separate Port of Long Beach. Promoted as "America's Port", t ...

and the

Port of Long Beach The Port of Long Beach, also known as the Harbor Department of the City of Long Beach, is a container port in the United States, which adjoins Port of Los Angeles. Acting as a major gateway for US–Asian trade, the port occupies of land with ...

, which together form the fifth-busiest

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

facility in the world (behind the ports of

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, borde ...

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

, and

Shenzhen Shenzhen (; ; ; ), also historically known as Sham Chun, is a major sub-provincial city and one of the special economic zones of China. The city is located on the east bank of the Pearl River estuary on the central coast of southern province ...

) and the busiest in the Americas. The Los Angeles community of San Pedro borders a small portion of the western side of the bay, and shares the name. The city of

Long Beach Long Beach is a city in Los Angeles County, California. It is the 42nd-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 466,742 as of 2020. A charter city, Long Beach is the seventh-most populous city in California. Incorporate ...

borders the port on the eastern side of the bay. The northern part of the bay, which is the largest part of the port, is bordered by the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington.

Seabed

Most of the bay is between deep. The seabed near Long Beach has experienced considerable subsidence as a result of oil extraction in the Wilmington Field from the 1950s onward. This helped the Port of Long Beach surpass the Port of Los Angeles as the leading port in the United States for a time in the 1980s and 1990s, since the deeper seafloor meant that Long Beach could accommodate ships with deeper drafts than could Los Angeles. Dredging operations related to the construction of a gigantic new marine terminal at the Port of Los Angeles have since made both sides of the bay accessible to even the largest existing

container ship A container ship (also called boxship or spelled containership) is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermoda ...

s. Concerns regarding subsidence increased until Operation "Big Squirt", a water injection program, halted any progression of sinking land in 1960.

Islands

Natural islands in San Pedro Bay include

Terminal Island Terminal Island, historically known as Isla Raza de Buena Gente, is a largely artificial island located in Los Angeles County, California, between the neighborhoods of Wilmington and San Pedro in the city of Los Angeles, and the city of Long B ...

(actually an augmented mudflat and Rattlesnake Island), the site of much of Los Angeles' and Long Beach's port facilities, and Mormon Island, the site of an abortive settlement attempt by

San Bernardino San Bernardino (; Spanish for "Saint Bernardino") is a city and county seat of San Bernardino County, California, United States. Located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California, the city had a population of 222,101 in the 2020 cen ...

-based Mormon pioneers in the 1850s. Land reclamation operations by Los Angeles have considerably enlarged Terminal Island, as well as linking Mormon Island to the mainland. Deadman's Island sat at a landmark at the foot of the bay, but was removed in 1928 as part of the effort by

Phineas Banning Phineas Banning (August 19, 1830 – March 8, 1885) was an American businessman, financier and entrepreneur. Known as "The Father of the Port of Los Angeles," he was one of the founders of the town of Wilmington, in Los Angeles County, Californ ...

to enlarge the harbor. In 1927 an

airport An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial air transport. Airports usually consists of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surface ...

was built on Terminal Island. Four small artificial islands containing oil wells (the THUMS Islands) are scattered around the bay near Long Beach. The oil drilling equipment itself is masked by tropical landscaping, architectural features and fake high-rise "buildings" in an attempt to improve their appearance from shore. These islands, named Oil Islands Freeman, Grissom, White, and Chaffee, are named for

Theodore Freeman Theodore Cordy "Ted" Freeman (February 18, 1930 – October 31, 1964), was an American aeronautical engineer, U.S. Air Force officer, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. Selected in the third group of NASA astronauts in 1963, he was killed a year ...

, the first

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil space program, aeronautics research, and space research. NASA was established in 1958, succeeding t ...

astronaut to die during flight, and for

Gus Grissom Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (April 3, 1926 – January 27, 1967) was an American engineer, pilot in the United States Air Force, and member of the Mercury Seven selected by National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) as Project Mercur ...

, Ed White, and

Roger B. Chaffee Roger Bruce Chaffee (; February 15, 1935 – January 27, 1967) was an American Officer (armed forces), naval officer, United States naval aviator, aviator and Aeronautical engineering, aeronautical engineer who was a NASA astronaut in the Apoll ...

, who were killed by a fire during the

Apollo 1 Apollo 1, initially designated AS-204, was intended to be the first crewed mission of the Apollo program, the American undertaking to land the first man on the Moon. It was planned to launch on February 21, 1967, as the first low Earth orbita ...

mission.

Free Harbor Fight

Angels Gate - San Pedro, Los Angeles, California panoramio

As Los Angeles developed as an economic and trading hub, the need for a deep harbor became apparent. In the late 1890s, the

Southern Pacific Railroad The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

started purchasing large parcels of land in

Santa Monica Santa Monica (; Spanish: ''Santa Mónica'') is a city in Los Angeles County, situated along Santa Monica Bay on California's South Coast. Santa Monica's 2020 U.S. Census population was 93,076. Santa Monica is a popular resort town, owing to ...

near its terminus, and the Huntington family advocated for a Santa Monica harbor, which would have monopolized Southern Pacific freight. In opposition, the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce and a newly formed Harbor League advocated for a harbor to be built in San Pedro, where the Southern Pacific would have competition with Phineas Banning's Los Angeles and Harbor Railroad. The resulting

Free Harbor Fight The Free Harbor Fight refers to the legal battle in the late nineteenth century on the West Coast of the United States, around Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce against Huntington and the Southern Pacific. US Senator Stephen M. White failed ...

and 1906 annexation of the Harbor Gateway ensured Wilmington and San Pedro would serve as the main port of Los Angeles. It also explains the considerable distance between the harbor and the city's main rail yards, a situation not addressed until the construction of the Alameda Corridor nearly a century later.

Breakwaters

Three

breakwaters A breakwater is a permanent structure constructed at a coastal area to protect against tides, currents, waves, and storm surges. Part of a coastal management system, breakwaters are installed to minimize erosion, and to protect anchorages, h ...

extend across most of the bay, with two openings to allow ships to enter the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach. The San Pedro Breakwater was constructed between 1899 and 1911 at San Pedro; the Middle Breakwater was completed over the next 25 years, and the

Breakwater was finished after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The breakwaters provided the ports considerable protection in the

1939 California tropical storm The 1939 California tropical storm, also known as the 1939 Long Beach tropical storm, and El Cordonazo, was a tropical cyclone that affected Southern California in September 1939. Formerly a hurricane, it was the only tropical storm to make landf ...

Restoration

The Long Beach breakwater is the target of controversy within the harbor towns and

Greater Los Angeles Greater Los Angeles is the second-largest metropolitan region in the United States with a population of 18.5 million in 2021, encompassing five counties in Southern California extending from Ventura County in the west to San Bernardino Coun ...

conservationist community, with various environmental groups, including the Long Beach chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, proposing modifying or removing the breakwater to promote better water flows and a more natural coastal environment at the mouth of the

Los Angeles River , name_etymology = , image = File:Los Angeles River from Fletcher Drive Bridge 2019.jpg , image_caption = L.A. River from Fletcher Drive Bridge , image_size = 300 , map = LARmap.jpg , map_size ...

. This restoration ecology-based removal is opposed by waterfront property owners and shippers, who consider that the breakwater provides needed protection from storm damage. A short documentary addressing the issues surrounding the reconfiguration of the Long Beach breakwater is available."Mother Wants Her Beauty Back"
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Seabed

Islands

Free Harbor Fight

Breakwaters

Restoration

See also

References

Further reading