Bull Creek

Bull Creek is a tributary of the Los Angeles River running through the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California. The creek originates in the hills north of the valley and flows south through Granada Hills, North Hills, Van Nuys and Lake Balboa before joining the Los Angeles River within the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin. Through much of the urbanised northern section, Bull Creek is contained within a wide concrete flood-control channel designed to carry stormwater safely through the surrounding neighbourhoods. Farther south, particularly within the Sepulveda Basin, sections of the creek return to a more natural channel surrounded by vegetation and restored riparian habitat. The stark concrete sections, bridges and access ramps are typical of the extensive flood-control system built across Los Angeles during the twentieth century and have also provided filmmakers with long, unobstructed spaces suitable for vehicle chases and action sequences.

Bull Creek has appeared in the television series T.J. Hooker (1982–1986) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). In T.J. Hooker, the creek appears briefly as part of a police investigation, while Terminator 2 transformed the concrete channel around Plummer Street, Hayvenhurst Avenue and Nordhoff Street into one of the most recognisable action locations in modern cinema.

In the T.J. Hooker episode “Hooker’s War” (1982), Bull Creek appears during Sergeant T.J. Hooker and Officer Vince Romano’s investigation into an illegal weapons operation. The episode begins when a suspicious van leads police to a cache of firearms and eventually exposes a scheme involving weapons that were supposedly destroyed after being confiscated by the police. During the investigation, Hooker and Romano drive east along Victory Boulevard and discover a man in Bull Creek. The sequence was filmed where Victory Boulevard crosses the creek in the San Fernando Valley, using the real watercourse and surrounding road network as part of the episode’s Los Angeles setting.

In Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Bull Creek forms a major part of the famous chase in which the T-1000 pursues John Connor through Los Angeles’ flood-control channels. After escaping from the confrontation between the two Terminators at the shopping mall, John races away on his small dirt bike and enters the concrete drainage system. The T-1000 commandeers a large Freightliner tow truck and follows him. At the intersection of Plummer Street and Hayvenhurst Avenue, the truck crashes through the side of the bridge and drops dramatically into Bull Creek below before continuing after John. A false section of wall was constructed for the stunt, concealing the ramp used to launch the truck into the channel. The T-800 then enters Bull Creek on his Harley-Davidson and catches up with John, eventually pulling him onto the motorcycle while continuing to evade the T-1000.

The completed chase gives the impression that the vehicles remain inside one continuous drainage channel, but the sequence was assembled from footage filmed at several different locations across the San Fernando Valley. Bull Creek was used extensively around both the Plummer Street and Nordhoff Street bridges, together with the nearby Granada Channel, sometimes described as the Bull Creek West Branch. Other portions of the chase were filmed in the Burbank Western System and La Tuna Canyon Channel. The filmmakers matched the similar concrete architecture of the different channels through editing, creating a continuous pursuit extending far beyond the section of Bull Creek seen on screen. The Plummer Street truck jump remains the location most strongly associated with Bull Creek and Terminator 2.

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