Portland's bridges over the Willamette

Twelve spans cross the Willamette inside Portland, and no two of them are alike: a 1908 railway swing span rebuilt as a vertical lift, the oldest working lift bridge in the country still carrying buses and bikes, a bascule whose west end deliberately misses the street it is named for. Ownership is as split as the engineering, divided among Multnomah County, the Oregon Department of Transportation, Union Pacific, TriMet and the City of Portland. What follows is the built record of how a city solved the same river problem nine different times between 1908 and 2015, including which decks were never meant for anyone on foot.

Places in this collection

  • Tilikum Crossing — Opened in 2015 and operated by TriMet, this cable-stayed span carries the MAX Orange Line, buses and the Portland Streetcar, along with wal…
  • The Steel Bridge — A through truss of 1912 with a double vertical-lift span, carrying Union Pacific, Amtrak and MAX light rail on one deck and rail, bikes and…
  • The Morrison Bridge — The third bridge on this alignment: a wooden swing span in 1888, a second swing bridge in 1905 not designed for cars, and the double-leaf C…
  • The Hawthorne Bridge — Built in 1910 to replace the Madison Bridge, which burned in 1902, this Parker truss with a vertical-lift span is the oldest operational ve…
  • The Burnside Bridge — A double-leaf Strauss-type bascule opened in 1926, carrying Burnside Street across the river beneath its two Renaissance-style operator tow…
  • The Broadway Bridge — Opened in 1913 and carrying Broadway plus the Portland Streetcar, this is a truss span with a double-leaf "Rall"-type bascule, a lift mecha…

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