SuicideBridge
Pasadena, California
5-12-2008
This site closes daily at dusk or 10:00 PM

Colorado Street (Suicide) Bridge, Pasadena, CA

History of the Bridge:

Built in 1913, the concrete Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena, California, has a perilous 150 foot drop to the riverbed below. It's known by locals by the moniker “Suicide Bridge."
The concrete bridge spans 1,467 feet across the Arroyo Seco, a deeply cut canyon linking the San Gabriel Mountains to the Los Angeles River, and containing the intermittent Arroyo Seco Stream for which it is named. The bridge is also often incorrectly called the "Arroyo Seco Bridge."
In Pasadena's early days, before the historic Colorado Street Bridge was built, crossing the Arroyo Seco was an extremely difficult task. Horses and wagons descended the steep eastern slope, crossed the stream over a smaller bridge, and then climbed up the west bank through Eagle Rock Pass.
The bridge was designed and built by the J.A.L. Waddell firm of Kansas City, Missouri and named for Colorado Street (now called Colorado Boulevard) which was the major east-west thoroughfare through Pasadena.
The first tragedy on the bridge occurred before construction was even complete. Allegedly, when one of the bridge workers toppled over the side and plunged headfirst into a vat of wet concrete, his co-workers assumed he could not be saved in time and left his body in the quick-drying cement. His is only one of the many souls said to haunt the “Suicide Bridge.”
The first suicide occurred on November 16, 1919 and was followed by a number of others, especially during the Great Depression. Over the years, it is estimated that more than 100 people took their lives leaping the 150 feet into the arroyo below. One of the more notable suicides was when a despondent mother threw her baby girl over the railing on May 1, 1937. She then followed her into the depths of the canyon. Though the mother died, her child miraculously survived. Evidently, her mother had inadvertently tossed her into some nearby trees, and she was later recovered from the thick branches. Story

Today the bridge contains a suicide railing to prevent suicides, but they still do happen.
~Justin~