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Railroad bridge in Portland, Oregon
Construction of the Willamette River bridge began in August 1906. The first train crossed on October 23, 1908, and the bridge opened for regular use in November. The Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway's first scheduled passenger train on the new line into and out of Portland operated on November 17, 1908, and the terminus in Portland was the North Bank Depot on N. W. Hoyt Street at 11th Avenue, rather than Union Station. SP&S service moved to Union Station in 1922. (officially shortened to BNSF Railway in 2005).

The bridge sustained heavy damage on October 29, 1978, when it was struck by a Norwegian container ship, the m. v. Marie Bakke. The ship hit the downstream end of the swing span, which had been in the fully open position; that was its normal position, as the span was closed only when trains needed to cross. Repairs took seven weeks, not being completed until January 1979. Meanwhile, BN and Amtrak trains had to be rerouted via Union Pacific tracks and across the Steel Bridge to reach the west side of the river. and ultimately reached an out of court settlement under which it received about $3.5 million from the shipping company. resulting in the deaths of two crew persons. It was the worst train related accident in the bridge's history. The cause was determined to have been human error, that the train crew had passed a red signal.

The center swing span was replaced by a vertical lift span and towers in a two year project completed in 1989, funded primarily by a federal grant. Prior to this change, numerous ships had struck the bridge over the years, After design and engineering were completed, a $28 million contract was awarded in May 1987 to Portland based Riedel International Inc. to carry out the work. The Coast Guard financed most of the cost of the conversion, but Burlington Northern paid about 3 percent of the cost. In order to minimize disruption to both river traffic and rail traffic, the project was carefully coordinated to allow the change to be made over just 72 hours. This work began on August 8, 1989, with removal of the 81 year old swing span section, The pivot pier was removed by dynamite blasting three months later, after the fall fish run, and with that final step the navigation channel was widened from 230 feet (70 m) to 497 feet (151 m). When fully raised, it provides vertical clearance of 200 feet (61 m) at low water. Signals on both approaches prevent trains from entering the bridge when the lift span is up, but as a precaution, all trains are still required to radio the bridge tender to obtain permission to cross. A bridge tender is on duty 24 hours a day, year round. The bridge is crossed by about 30 to 35 trains per day.