60 Fun Facts About Golden Gate Bridge

The Golden Gate Bridge spans a strait connecting San Francisco Bay with which ocean?

The strait is about one mile wide, with water 372 feet deep in the centre of the channel.

The bridge links San Francisco to which county across the strait?

It carries both US Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the water.

How many main towers carry the bridge's two main cables?

The cables pass over the towers and are fixed in concrete anchorages at each end.

Roughly how wide is the strait that the bridge crosses?

Experts once said no bridge could be built across it because of the tides, the 372-foot depth and the winds.

What is the official name of the bridge's colour?

It complements the setting and helps ships see the bridge in fog.

Who chose the bridge's famous colour?

The relatively unknown residential architect also designed the towers' shape, the lighting and the Art Deco details.

What paint scheme did the US Navy suggest for the bridge so passing ships could see it?

Morrow's orange won out.

Who was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge project?

An ambitious engineer and poet, he had built some 400 drawbridges but nothing on this scale.

For his graduate thesis, Strauss had designed a 55-mile railroad bridge across which stretch of water?

He promised the Golden Gate could be built for $17 million after the city engineer estimated $100 million.

Which engineer, credited by the Bridge District in 2007 with the design, was fired by Strauss in 1931 and finished the calculations unpaid?

He worked 70 hours a week for free during the Depression and turned in ten volumes of hand calculations.

Which engineer of New York's Manhattan Bridge conceived the final suspension design and its deflection theory?

His later Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a windstorm in 1940 because of aeroelastic flutter.

Whose 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article made the proposal for the bridge that eventually took hold?

He was a former engineering student, and the city engineer put the cost at an impractical $100 million.

Which powerful company opposed the bridge as competition for its ferry fleet and sued to stop it?

The lawsuit prompted a mass boycott of the ferry service.

Which North Coast county refused to join the Golden Gate Bridge District because its residents opposed the bridge?

The district was created by a 1923 act of the state legislature.

Which banker agreed in 1932 to buy the entire $30 million bond issue so construction could begin?

He founded San Francisco's Bank of America and acted to help the local economy after the Crash.

On what date did construction of the bridge begin?

The project cost more than $35 million and came in ahead of schedule and $1.3 million under budget.

The steelwork was built by McClintic-Marshall, a subsidiary of which corporation?

Its founders, Howard McClintic and Charles Marshall, were both Lehigh University men.

What did workers saved by Strauss's movable safety net call themselves?

Nineteen men were saved by the nets over the course of the project.

How many men died in falls during construction of the bridge?

Ten of them died on a single day, 17 February 1937, when a scaffold broke through the net.

Strauss placed a brick from a demolished hall of his alma mater in the south anchorage. Which school?

The brick came from McMicken Hall.

How long is the bridge's main span?

It was the world's longest until 1964, when a New York span beat it by sixty feet.

How tall are the bridge's towers above the water?

They were the tallest on any suspension bridge until Mexico's Mezcala Bridge in 1993.

Roughly how many miles of galvanised steel wire went into the two main cables?

Each cable is made of 27,572 strands, and each tower holds about 600,000 rivets.

Which New York span took away the Golden Gate's title of longest suspension span in 1964?

The Golden Gate still has the second-longest main span in the Americas.

Which Japanese span, opened in 1998, overtook the Golden Gate as the world's tallest suspension bridge?

At its opening in 1937 the Golden Gate had been both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world.

Ellis designed a steel arch at the southern end so that which pre-Civil War fortification would not have to be demolished?

The fort, historically the Castillo de San Joaquín, is now a National Historic Site.

Who was the first person to run across the bridge from end to end on its opening day?

About 200,000 people crossed on foot or roller skates the day before cars were allowed.

Which president pushed a button in Washington to signal the official start of vehicle traffic?

Weeks of civic celebrations called the Fiesta followed.

What was the title of the official song chosen for the 1937 opening?

Strauss wrote a poem, The Mighty Task is Done, which is now displayed on the bridge.

What was the car toll when the bridge opened in 1937?

It was collected in each direction; tolls have been southbound-only since 1968.

Until 1970, what did pedestrians pay to walk across the bridge?

The toll was collected via turnstiles on the sidewalks.

In what year were the last construction bonds paid off, entirely from tolls?

Tolls covered $35 million in principal and nearly $39 million in interest.

Since 1968, in which direction have tolls been collected on the bridge?

Tolls have been collected southbound-only since 1968; all-electronic tolling began in 2013.

How many vehicle lanes does the bridge have?

The lane split shifts several times a day to match traffic.

Roughly how many vehicles cross the bridge each day?

The speed limit was cut from 50 to 45 mph in 1983.

What was installed in January 2015 after the longest closure in the bridge's history?

From 1968 to 2015 lanes were separated only by plastic pylons, and 128 head-on collisions killed 16 people.

What happened when up to a million people crowded onto the bridge for its 50th anniversary in 1987?

The bridge is designed to flex that way and stayed well within its cables' yielding stress.

Between 1982 and 1986 the original concrete deck was replaced with what?

The 747 sections were swapped over 401 nights without ever fully closing the roadway.

A 1951 windstorm closed the bridge and led to what retrofit in 1953-54?

The bracing stiffened the deck against the twisting that had destroyed the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

Which fault line's proximity prompted the bridge's $392 million seismic retrofit?

Engineers found the arch at the southern end could have triggered total collapse in a big quake.

Why did residents start hearing the bridge hum in June 2020?

The tones correspond to the notes F, G, A and B, an F Lydian tetrachord.

How many foghorns were installed on the bridge in 1937 and remain in use?

Two sit at the base of the south tower and three at midspan; the Coast Guard sets their pattern and pitch.

Who gave the strait the name Chrysopylae, or Golden Gate, comparing it to Byzantium's Golden Horn?

The Greek name Chrysopylae echoes Chrysoceras, the harbour of Byzantium.

Whose ship San Carlos was the first known European vessel to pass through the strait, in 1775?

Fog had hidden the entrance from Cabrillo and Drake two centuries earlier.

Which other Bay Area bridge opened six months before the Golden Gate, in November 1936?

Its eastern span was rebuilt as a self-anchored suspension bridge that opened in 2013.

How many painters maintain the bridge's paintwork today?

The mid-1960s repainting programme with zinc silicate primer was completed in 1995.

Where did the American Institute of Architects rank the bridge on its 1999 list of America's Favorite Architecture?

The American Society of Civil Engineers lists it among the Wonders of the Modern World.

A 1962 review board rejected running which transit system across the bridge on a lower deck?

Consulting engineer Clifford Paine had disagreed with a study that said the span could carry it.

In which 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film does Scottie rescue Madeleine from the bay after she jumps in beneath the bridge?

She jumps at the old fort that sits directly under the bridge's southern arch.

Which actor joined environmentalists in 1996 to hang a protest banner from the bridge, snarling traffic all day?

The stunt led to a 1997 state law stiffening penalties for trespassing on the bridge.

How wide is the average clearance between the bridge deck and high water?

The Queen Mary 2 passed underneath in 2007 as the foghorns blared.

The Golden Gate Bridge is designated as part of which US Bicycle Route?

Railings between the walkways and traffic lanes were added in 2003 to stop cyclists falling into the roadway.

Roughly how deep is the water at the centre of the Golden Gate channel?

Sceptics said the swirling tides, ferocious winds and blinding fogs would make construction impossible.

How many pairs of vertical suspender ropes hold up the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge?

Each main cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire, and each tower holds around 600,000 rivets.

The Golden Gate Bridge was designed to safely withstand winds of up to what speed?

Before 2008 it had closed for weather only three times, all for December gusts between 69 and 75 mph.

The Round House Café at the bridge's southeast end is an Art Deco design by whom?

Completed in 1938, the diner long served as an unofficial gift shop and a starting point for bridge tours.

The name 'Golden Gate Bridge' became official through a state act passed in which year?

City engineer M.M. O'Shaughnessy and Strauss had first used the name in discussions in 1917.

How many people crossed on foot or roller skates the day before cars were allowed in 1937?

The opening celebration began at 6 a.m. on May 27 and ran for a full week.

The elevated Presidio approach to the bridge, demolished in 2012, was known as what?

Dating to 1933 and named for a California State Automobile Association director, it was replaced by the Presidio Parkway in 2015.

Which travel guide called it 'possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed' bridge?

At its 1937 opening it was both the longest and tallest suspension bridge on the planet.