Henry Ford Bridge

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Henry Ford Bridge, also known as the Badger Avenue Bridge, is a railroad bridge in Los Angeles County. It carries the Pacific Harbor Line over the Cerritos Channel, linking San Pedro with Terminal Island to serve the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach.

The bridge was built to support operations at the Ford Long Beach Assembly Plant, which opened in 1930 and closed in 1959. The original 1924 bridge was a bascule bridge—its moveable leaves lifted to let ships pass. In 1996 it was replaced by a vertical-lift bridge with a clearance of 165 feet.

The project was contracted in 1922 by the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners. It was designed by Joseph Baermann Strauss and built by the American Bridge Company. The original design included two 110-foot bascule leaves forming a Warren through-truss, plus two 50-foot tower spans and two 200-foot timber approaches.