The Santa Fe Arroyo Seco Railroad Bridge in

Highland Park, Los Angeles Highland Park is a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, located in the city's Northeast region. It was one of the first subdivisions of Los Angeles and is inhabited by a variety of ethnic and socioeconomic groups. History The area was set ...

, is more than long and crosses the

Arroyo Seco Parkway The Arroyo Seco Parkway, also known as the Pasadena Freeway, is one of the oldest freeways built in the United States. It connects Los Angeles with Pasadena alongside the Arroyo Seco seasonal river. It is notable not only for being an early f ...

at an elevation of over . It is the tallest and longest railroad span in the city of Los Angeles, and most likely the oldest such structure still in use. The bridge crosses the lower part of the Arroyo Seco, a watershed canyon from the San Gabriel Mountains. The Santa Fe Arroyo Seco bridge, built in 1896, replaced the 1889 wooden trestle used by the

Southern California Railway Southern California Railway was formed on November 7, 1889. it was formed by consolidation of California Southern Railroad Company, the California Central Railway Company, and the Redondo Beach Railway Company. A second consolidation and reform ...

, which was a subsidiary of the

Santa Fe Railroad The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison and Topeka, Kansas, and ...

. The 1889 bridge, designed by Santa Fe's chief structural engineer Fred T. Perris, replaced the original 1885 wooden trestle bridge built by the

Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad The Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad was a railroad founded on Sept. 5, 1883, by James F. Crank with the goal of bringing a rail line to Pasadena from downtown Los Angeles. Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad was sold and cons ...

. Rail service ended in 1994 and in the late 1990s, the bridge was retrofitted to accommodate the Los Angeles MTA's Gold Line light rail system which opened on July 26, 2003.Charles J. Fisher, historian and preservationist
/ref> Advocated by the Highland Park Heritage Trust and Charles J. Fisher, the bridge was declared City of

Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments are sites which have been designated by the Los Angeles, California, Cultural Heritage Commission as worthy of preservation based on architectural, historic and cultural criteria. History The Historic-Cult ...

No. 339 on January 22, 1988.http://cityplanning.lacity.org/complan/HCM/dsp_hcm_result.cfm?community=Northeast Los Angeles File:Santa Fe Arroyo Seco Railroad Bridge aerial.jpg, Aerial view of the bridge. File:Santa Fe Arroyo Seco Railroad Bridge trestle.JPG, One of the bridge's

trestles ATLAS-I (Air Force Weapons Lab Transmission-Line Aircraft Simulator), better known as Trestle, was a unique electromagnetic pulse (EMP) generation and testing apparatus built between 1972 and 1980 during the Cold War at Sandia National Labora ...

. File:Los Angeles and San Gabriel Railroad train on the bridge at Garvanza, the first trestle across the Arroyo Seco, approaching Highland Park from South Pasadena, ca.1885 (CHS-6666).jpg , 1885 view of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Railroad crossing the Arroyo Seco near Garvanza - Highland Park File:Rail line map of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad.jpg, Rail line map of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley Railroad 1885

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* Bridges in Los Angeles County, California Railroad bridges in California Arroyo Seco (Los Angeles County) Highland Park, Los Angeles Steel bridges in the United States Bridges completed in 1896 1896 establishments in California Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments Historic American Engineering Record in California Trestle bridges in the United States L Line (Los Angeles Metro) {{California-bridge-struct-stub

See also

References

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