Another interesting story I;ve heard about the pedestrian bridge is that the Spring street end was "original" (even possibly "pre" 1890's) with those "wide wooden steps" (which would seem unnecessary for the level of pedestrian traffic in later years), was built to originally go over the "old main line" (before the west bank line was built in the the late 1930's) to connect to the trains at the SP's original River Station (at one time the ticket office and SP's LA offices were once supposedly located at the end of the bridge across Spring Street from the yard).

This may have even been before SP moved passenger operations to the Arcade station by the early 1890's, later the location of Central Station (1914) down between 4th and 5th, off of Alameda Street.

And, the "old head" story was that the part of the bridge, toward the Broadway side, had either been rebuilt and/or extended, when the freight yard was expanded (the puzzle switch "lead" era), sometime after the mid 1890's, for the public to be able to cross the yard. The Spring street stairs section does seem like it could be "older", and seems to be of a somewhat different design.

But, I've never seen any historical source that could confirm this story, or that has any timeline of the history of the pedestrian bridge. It's an interesting RR "history" research question, and maybe there's a record and/or "pieces' that "puzzle" in the old SP, an/or old RR Commission/PUC archives, or from old Sandborn fire insurance maps.

Unfortunately, we just recently lost one the folks who might have been able to give us an answer, Bruce Petty.