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Building History

James W. Scoville (born 10/14/1825 in Pompey, NY), a Chicago banker, farmed citrus groves on the Arroyo Seco in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. He commissioned the construction of this timber truss-leg bridge to improve hauling, and a dam to provide water for irrigating crops and generating power.

Scoville built the two structures between 1887-1903. A report on the Colorado Street Bridge written by historian Deborah Slaton in 1988, also noted that the Scoville Bridge was a reused train trestle, left unused by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad. She wrote: "The Scoville bridge stood beneath the present location of the Colorado Street Bridge, and was built from a segment of railway bridge trestle left over from construction of a Santa Fe Railway bridge nearby. The trestle was placed upside-down across the stream bed, and set in a concrete foundation on either side. Scoville's original bridge survived until the flood of 1914, when the trestle was carried all the way down the Arroyo Seco and into the Los Angeles River." (See Deborah Slaton, Colorado Street Bridge HAER No. CA-58 JM Spanning the Arroyo Seco at Colorado Boulevard, Pasadena Los Angeles County. California, [Washington, DC: National Park Service (NPS), Historic American Engineering Record, 1988], p. 5. Online at:Accessed 09/04/2012.)

Demolished; the Scoville Bridge was destroyed by winter flood waters in 1914.

PCAD id: 8953