The Golden Gate: Building an Impossible Bridge
Date Posted: December 23, 2016
Posted In: Projects,
From The B1M: In the 1920’s, long before the technologies and advancements of today’s construction industry, a scheme was conceived to build an impossible bridge across the Golden Gate Strait in California. Today that structure remains one of the world’s most famous landmarks. But to truly appreciate the magnitude of this achievement, you need to understand the bridge’s story.
In this must-watch documentary – part of The B1M’s construction history series – we explore the journey behind one of the greatest engineering feats of the 20th Century.
The Golden Gate Strait is a mile-wide channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Many of northern California’s waterways and mountain slopes run into San Francisco Bay and out to the ocean through this channel, generating fast flowing, treacherous water.
Before the existence of the bridge, the only way to cross the channel without taking an extended drive around the bay was by ferry. With the rise of cars and the growth of San Francisco in the boom years, some 2.5M car trips were being made across the water each year by 1929 and the congestion levels fueled calls for a bridge to be attempted across the gap.
Many felt that such a feat was impossible. The channel’s width, combined with a depth of 372 feet (around 113 meters), and the harsh environmental conditions were all too great to overcome.
To assess the project’s feasibility, the city turned to renowned bridge engineer Joseph Strauss. Strauss had a high pedigree for developing bridges but was infamously difficult to work with and had a reputation for creating unattractive designs.
His first proposal was widely disliked, and the city’s authorities insisted that he could only proceed if he accepted design input from others. That input came from Leon Moisseiff, Irving Morrow and Charles Alton Ellis, and led to the development of the bridge as we know it today.