Terminator 2: Judgment Day — Los Angeles Filming Sites

The film's first Los Angeles scene belongs to the T-800. It arrives naked in the San Fernando Valley, walks into a biker hangout, and leaves with a leather jacket, a bike, shades and a large gun after a short fight. The Corral Bar stood at 12002 Osborne Street in Lake View Terrace; it is long gone, and the Lake View Terrace Branch Library now stands on the site.

Visitor guidance: The Lake View Terrace Branch Library stands on the site at 12002 Osborne Street; the bar itself is gone.

The T-1000 arrives in 1995 beneath the Sixth Street Bridge, appearing in downtown Los Angeles at the start of its hunt for John. The viaduct on screen no longer exists: the first bridge opened in 1932 and was demolished in 2016, and the replacement opened on 9 July 2022. The new span crosses the Los Angeles River, the Santa Ana Freeway and the Golden State Freeway, and you can walk or cycle across it.

Visitor guidance: The replacement bridge is open to walkers and cyclists, linking downtown with the east bank of the Los Angeles River.

John hides in a shopping mall, where the T-1000 finds him and the T-800 arrives to save him. The interior was filmed at Santa Monica Place, a 162-store mall at Broadway and Third Street, two blocks from the beach and Santa Monica Pier. The exterior shots were taken at Northridge Fashion Center because there was less traffic there. Santa Monica Place opened in 1980 and reopened as an outdoor mall on 6 August 2010. It is still a working mall at the south end of Third Street.

Visitor guidance: The mall is at Broadway and Third Street, two blocks from Santa Monica Pier.

John escapes on his dirt bike and drops into a concrete flood-control channel, with the T-1000 following in a Freightliner tow-truck. The chase ends when the truck crashes from the Plummer Street overpass at Hayvenhurst Avenue into Bull Creek, tearing through the 40-foot wide spillway. The channel runs down to the Sepulveda Flood Control Area, where the Balboa and Encino golf courses sit in dry weather. The spillway is open land, but it is a working flood channel: stay out during and after rain.

Visitor guidance: The channel is open ground in dry weather; never enter it during or after rain.

Sarah has been locked up in Pescadero State Hospital, and John and the T-800 arrive to break her out before the T-1000 does. Pescadero is fictional; the exteriors were filmed at the former Lake View Medical Center at 11600 Eldridge Avenue, near Kagel Canyon in the San Fernando Valley, and the garage scenes at the Petersen Automotive Museum. The building later became the Phoenix House Academy. It is a treatment facility, not a visitor site: see it from the street.

Before the hunt for Dyson, Sarah dreams of Los Angeles under a nuclear firestorm, and the nightmare pushes her to go after him. The dream was filmed in Elysian Park, the 600-acre park created by city ordinance on 5 April 1886. Angels Point, a small hill in the park, looks over Dodger Stadium and the skyline — the same city Sarah sees burning. The park is open to the public, with trails and viewpoints, and Angels Point is the classic place to stand.

Visitor guidance: Angels Point is the classic viewpoint over Dodger Stadium and downtown; the park has trails throughout.

The trio break into Cyberdyne to take back the CPU and the arm and to blow the lab up; Dyson dies setting off the charges. The headquarters is not in Los Angeles at all: it was filmed at 47131 Bayside Parkway in Fremont, now the home of Mattson Technology. A glass facade was added for a third storey, and the windows were wired to blow out with a gasoline fireball. The building is a working office, visible from the street but not open to visitors.

The last chase was shot on the Terminal Island Freeway, a three-mile stretch of road through the port linking Sepulveda Boulevard with the naval base on Terminal Island. A 2.5-mile section was closed to traffic every night for two weeks so the crew could work. The freeway's isolation and industrial surroundings have made it a standby for filmmakers, including Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Fast and the Furious. It is a live freeway with no stopping or walking: this one is a drive-by.

The T-1000 corners the trio in a steel mill, and the film ends with Sarah and the T-800 pushing it into a vat of molten steel, then lowering the T-800 itself into the same vat. The mill is the closed Kaiser Steel plant in Fontana; the molten metal on screen is rivers of white paint and illuminated plastic panels. Kaiser Steel shut the mill on 31 December 1983, and part of the site later became the California Speedway. The works are gone.