Golden Gate Bridge

Talk about the City of San Francisco and one landmark will surely come to mind – The Golden Gate Bridge.  It is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate Strait – the opening into the San Francisco Bay from the Pacific Ocean.  The Bridge is 1.7 miles long and 90 feet wide – good for 6 lanes of vehicular traffic and walkways on either side of the bridge.  It connects the City of San Francisco with Marin County, near the small bayside town of Sausalito.  Before its construction, commuters wanting to go north of San Francisco would have to take a ferry ride to travel across the bay.

The Golden Gate Bridge was an idea of Joseph Strauss, an engineer responsible for over 400 drawbridges, though far smaller and mostly located inland.  Strauss spent over a decade perfecting the bridge’s design and enlisting the support of the government and the citizens of Northern California.  The design and construction was made possible with the help of people including Architect Irving Morrow who is responsible for the Art Deco features and the choice of color, and Engineer Charles Alton Ellis and bridge designer Leon Moisseiff, who collaborated on the complicated mathematics involved.  In 1928, The Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District was incorporated as the official body to design, finance, construct, and maintain the bridge.  Actual construction began on January 5, 1933.

After more than four years of construction, the bridge was completed in April 1937 and was opened to pedestrians on May 27 of the same year.  The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington, D.C. signalling the official start of vehicle traffic over the bridge at noon.

Upon its time of completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world.  It is now the second longest in the United States after the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City, erected in 1964 and connecting the boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island.  From the time of its opening, the bridge was closed only 3 times – in 1951, 1982, and 1983 – due to windy conditions.

To commemorate the importance of Joseph Strauss in the realization of the Golden Gate Bridge, a statue in his honor was relocated near the structure in 1955.

Golden Gate Bridge Information

The bridge’s color is orange vermilion, sometimes referred to as international orange.  The color was chosen because it blends well with the surroundings while at the same time, enhances its visibility in fogs. The bridge is widely considered as one of the most beautiful examples of bridge engineering, both in structural design and for its aesthetic appeal. It was declared one of the modern Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. According to Frommer's travel guide, the Golden Gate Bridge is "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world."

The Golden Gate Bridge is also one of the most featured landmarks in movies and television.  It comes as no surprise when the bridge becomes the location of climactic scenes.  The bridge has also been prominently featured or mentioned in several books and is presently experiencing another form of reincarnation – this time in video games.