Hawthorne Bridge

The Hawthorne Bridge is a truss bridge with a vertical lift that spans the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, joining Hawthorne Boulevard and Madison Street. It is the oldest vertical-lift bridge in operation in the United States and the oldest highway bridge in Portland. It is also the busiest bicycle and transit bridge in Oregon, with over 8,000 cyclists and 800 TriMet buses daily. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2012.
The bridge consists of five fixed spans and one 244-foot-long vertical-lift span. It is 1,382 feet in total length. The bridge was originally 63 feet wide, including two five-foot sidewalks, but the sidewalks were widened to 10 feet in 1998, increasing the structure's overall width to 73 feet . The 880,000-pound counterweights are suspended from the two 165-foot-tall towers. On average, the lift span is raised for river traffic 120 times per month. While the river is at low level, the bridge is 49 feet above the water, causing it to be raised an average of 200 times per month. As of 2001, the average daily traffic was 30,500 vehicles. The bridge was designed by Waddell & Harrington, which also designed the Steel and Interstate bridges. John Alexander Low Waddell invented the modern-day vertical-lift bridge.

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