Golden Gate Bridge Opens
Next: May 27, 2027
A necklace for San Francisco.
The story
Where it comes from
On 27 May 1937 the Golden Gate Bridge opened, and this Story marks the anniversary. For more than a century people had dreamed of spanning the strait at the mouth of San Francisco Bay, and many engineers said it could not be done. Chief engineer Joseph Strauss led the project, and work began on 5 January 1933. The first day belonged to walkers: from 6 a.m. to dusk the roadway was open only to pedestrians, and as many as 200,000 crossed. Cars followed at noon the next day.
How it's celebrated
There is no public holiday. In San Francisco you can still do what the crowds did in 1937 and walk across: the east pavement is open to walkers every day, and cyclists can cross at any hour. Anywhere else, it is a day to look up the story of a bridge in your own city, and to thank the people who built it.
Did you know
- A reporter wrote the next day that 'a necklace of surpassing beauty was placed about the lovely throat of San Francisco'.
- Its 1,280-metre main span was the longest in the world until New York's Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964.
- Many of the world's longest suspension spans are now in Asia, among them Korea's Yi Sun-sin Bridge and Hong Kong's Tsing Ma Bridge.
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