ERRC Bruin Legacy Campus Tour: UCLA's Lost Bridge

UCLA's Lost Bridge: "Bridging UCLA's Past and Present"

Facilitated by the UCLA Emeriti/Retirees Relations Center

**This tour requires step climbing and moderate walking. Group will meet at the UCLA Flagpoles at Dickson Plaza at 1:15 PM. The tour starts at 1:30 PM and will last 45 minutes, with an additional 15 minutes for Q&A. 

Rather than a figurative “north” and “south” campus that prevails today, in its youthful stage, UCLA was divided into east and west sides. A five-story deep ravine separated the young campus, and it was the Arroyo Bridge that brought students into the campus as Powell and Royce Hall towered in the background. However, it was what occurred down at the base of and in the bridge that was the most significant aspect of this erased history.

Hidden beneath the roadway lies the first structure ever built on campus: the Arroyo Bridge. Constructed in 1927 in the style of a Roman aqueduct, the bridge spans 285 feet in length and 75 feet in width, crossing what was once a deep arroyo. As UCLA expanded, the ravine came to be seen as an obstacle to the campus’s growth. To address this, workers reinforced the bridge with concrete retaining walls and filled in the arroyo, transforming the area into usable land and adding 24 acres to the campus.

Over its twenty-year history, from May 1927 to the summer of 1947, the brick-slabbed Arroyo Bridge played a vital role during the Great Depression and in shaping the foundations of the UCLA that exists today.

The tour will take place beneath Dickson Plaza, under the historic Arroyo Bridge near the UCLA flagpole, between Royce Hall and Powell Library.

Click here to see the Campus Parking Map. The closest visitor parking to the Flagpoles at Dickson Plaza is Parking Structure 4 (P4), with Parking Structure 5 (P5) as a nearby alternative. Both offer hourly self-pay parking and are within easy walking distance.