Today in History- Golden Gate Bridge

I love history. I enjoy learning about the past and find it interesting how often we repeat it. I especially enjoy learning local history. Periodically I'll go down to Barnes & Noble and pick up one of the "Images of America" series. They show history through pictures with small narratives under each image. What I really like about them is that it's all local history. I find books about East Bay cities, South Bay cities, the Peninsula and about San Francisco. Now San Francisco is so large to talk about that they divided the books by districts. There's one for Mission District, Visitation Valley, Noe Valley and so on. It's a fun way to learn some local history.

So speaking of local history, one of our most beautiful landmarks has an anniversary today. If you said the Golden Gate Bridge then you did read the title or you're really up on your SF history.

On January 5, 1933, San Francisco broke ground and began construction on the Golden Gate Bridge. Workers began excavating 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s huge anchorages.

After the Gold Rush boom there had been speculations that the land north of San Francisco Bay would increase in value if it found a way to be accessible to the city. So plans where drawn up to build a bridge across the Golden Gate, a narrow 400-foot deep strait, that would connect the San Francisco Peninsula with the southern end of Marin County.

The idea of building such a bridge went back as far as 1869. But it wasn't until 1916 that a proposal took root. A San Francisco Bulletin journalist, James Wilkins, who was a former engineering student, suggested a suspension bridge with a center span of 3,000 feet, twice the length of any bridge at the time. The estimated cost for this venture was a shocking $100 million. So it's no surprise that San Francisco's city engineer, Michael O'Shughnessy (who is credited with naming the Golden Gate Bridge) began asking around if anyone could do it for less. We found our champion in a 5-foot tall poet engineer from Chicago named Joseph Strauss.

After much discussion, O'Shaughnessy and Strauss agreed to build a pure suspension bridge with a main span of 4,000 feet in the price range of $25-30 million. They unfortunately couldn't start right away. They were bogged down with opposition and litigation from many sources. Just as the dust was settling, the Great Depression of 1929 set in, seriously diminishing their finances, so officials convinced voters to support a $35 million bond, increasing the city's debt in the process, citing all the new jobs that this new project would create. But the bond couldn't be sold until 1932 when San Francisco based Bank of America agreed to buy the entire project in order to help the local economy.

The Golden Gate Bridge officially opened on May 27, 1937 as the longest bridge span in the world at the time.

For the past 75 years the bridge has stood firm with its tall red towers attracting visitors from far and near to witness its beauty. An enchanting landmark, the pride of its city.