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Welcome to the Golden Gate Bridge, the iconic red-orange giant stretching across the mouth of San Francisco Bay. But why is it called the Golden Gate when nothing about it is golden? It almost ended up painted like a giant bumblebee. Why do more than 10 million tourists each year snap selfies with what is essentially a glorified road? Built during the Great Depression, this engineering marvel has a story as bold as its color.
When Joseph Strauss first proposed his plan in 1921, people laughed. A bridge across this strait was considered architectural suicide. But Strauss wasn’t laughing. He toured towns across Northern California, gave speeches, answered questions, and rallied voters.
Many experts said a bridge could not be built across the mile-wide strait, with strong, swirling tides and currents, water more than 300 feet (100 meters) deep at the channel’s center, and frequent strong winds. Critics claimed that even if they built it, it would not stand.
Ferry operators feared losing their lucrative business, and environmentalists warned it would scar the bay's natural beauty. The U.S. War Department, which owned the land on both shores of the Gate, also had to approve the bridge, fearing it would hinder navigation, while opponents warned that an enemy fleet could demolish it and bottle up the U.S. fleet.
Strauss spent more than a decade drumming up support in California. Lawsuits stalled the bond sale. The federal government wouldn’t touch it. But Bank of America founder Amadeo Giannini, the son of Italian immigrants, put his reputation (and his bank) on the line: his bank led the syndicate behind the $35 million bond issue, equating to more than $700 million in today’s dollars, and took the first $6 million of bonds when no one else would.
When construction began in 1933, the U.S. was still gripped by the Great Depression, with unemployment at staggering levels. The Golden Gate Bridge project gave struggling Americans jobs, dignity, and purpose. The project was launched on January 5, 1933. It was completed ahead of schedule and $1.3 million under budget, a rarity even today.
Building of the Golden Gate Bridge towers, c. 1934. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Critics attacked Strauss’s engineering abilities, and the local press called his initial design “ugly.”
To promote himself and secure his legacy, Strauss downplayed his collaborators' contributions. He succeeded in having himself credited as most responsible for the bridge's design and vision. Engineer Charles Alton Ellis did the heavy lifting, literally and mathematically. A reclusive genius, Ellis worked with suspension theorist Leon Moisseiff and, in an age before computers, calculated the suspension system’s impossible stresses largely by hand. His mind kept the bridge standing, but Strauss fired him in late 1931, for reasons that remain unclear, before construction even began. For decades, Ellis’s name was erased from the record. Only in 2007 did the Bridge District officially credit him, and in 2012, 75 years after the bridge opened, he was honored with a plaque at the site.
Building the bridge was a really dangerous endeavor. The chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, a forward-thinking man for his time, placed a high emphasis on safety. He insisted on a protective net beneath the bridge, a revolutionary idea at the time. Eleven men lost their lives during construction, but a safety net under the bridge saved 19 others, dubbed the “Halfway to Hell Club.” The water below the bridge is very cold year-round. With fierce currents and sharp drop-offs, it’s one of California's most treacherous spots.
Together with its anchorages and approaches, the Golden Gate weighs 887,000 tons, or nearly 1.8 billion pounds, of steel, concrete, and cable. Each of the bridge’s two mighty towers is held together by roughly 600,000 power-driven rivets. It can move down 11 feet (3.3 meters), up 6 feet (1.8 meters), and 28 feet (8.4 meters) side to side. What makes it move? Wind, traffic weight, and even temperature. When the wind blows hard, you can feel movement if you're walking across.
The bridge’s two main cables, with their suspenders and fittings, weigh 24,500 tons combined, and each cable contains 27,572 separate wires. One main cable is 36 3/8 in. (0.92 meters) in diameter.
The original bridge used a concrete deck. Fog or mist carried salt to the rebar, causing corrosion and concrete spalling. From 1982 to 1986, crews systematically replaced the original deck with lighter, stronger steel orthotropic deck panels. This overhaul was the bridge's most significant engineering project since its construction and cost over $68 million.
The Golden Gate Bridge also connects centuries. Just beneath its southern arc, a forgotten fortress still keeps watch. Fort Point is a brick stronghold completed in 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, to defend San Francisco Bay from foreign invaders. When engineers drew up bridge plans in the 1930s, they initially considered demolishing it, but chief engineer Joseph Strauss recognized the fort’s historical value, and his engineers redesigned the bridge to arch elegantly over it.
Today, this military relic stands like a time capsule under the bridge’s modern majesty. Climb one of the towers, and you’ll be 746 feet (227 meters) above the water, higher than the Washington Monument. On a clear day, the view stretches for miles in every direction.
The Golden Gate Bridge finally opened on May 27, 1937. It shattered records as the world's longest suspension bridge, with a main span stretching an awe-inspiring 4,200 feet (1,280 meters). Before cars rolled across it, the bridge had its moment in the spotlight, literally.
San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis
Some 200,000 people walked, danced, roller-skated, and even tap-danced across the span. The next day, May 28, President Roosevelt, with the press of a telegraph key from Washington, D.C., officially opened the bridge to vehicle traffic. For one entire week, the city celebrated its new engineering marvel with parades, fireworks, and fanfare.
After the 1937 opening, crossing the bridge’s span cost just 50 cents each way. That price covered not just your car, but up to three passengers! Today, drivers heading into San Francisco pay $10.25 to $11.25 for a two-axle car or a motorcycle southbound (northbound is free)
Yet beneath the beauty and celebration lay a silent challenge. California's shaky ground.
The bridge was designed with flexibility in mind, and its engineers explicitly factored earthquake forces into the design. The engineers knew California’s instability meant the bridge had to move with the earth’s rumble, not fight it. And it did. During the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, although the nearby Bay Bridge suffered damage, the Golden Gate Bridge remained standing firm. Since then, it has undergone a multi-phase seismic retrofit, with the final phase on the main span and towers beginning in 2026, to prepare for “The Big One.”
Soaring roughly 220 feet (67 meters) above the chilly waters of the Golden Gate Strait, the bridge offers not just a breathtaking view. The War Department fixed that clearance in its 1930 permit so massive ocean liners, including warships and cruise vessels, could glide beneath it with ease. During World War II, it served as a gateway for U.S. Navy fleets heading into the Pacific.
In 1941, immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack, fears of enemy sabotage swept the West Coast. After Pearl Harbor, the Army treated the bridge as a target to be defended: soldiers were posted on the bridge, and anti-aircraft guns ringed the surrounding hills. Although the attack never materialized, the bridge remained a prime target because of its importance to shipping and the military.
During World War II, the Golden Gate Bridge served as a vital lifeline. With military bases dotted across the Bay Area, including the forts of the Marin Headlands just across the span, the bridge was a strategic link worth defending. Without it, the military's response time could’ve been dangerously hampered, leaving the West Coast more vulnerable during the war’s uncertain early days.
It became the gateway for returning WWII soldiers, a vision of freedom during the Cold War, a backdrop for LGBTQ+ rights marches, and a place of reflection after 9/11. It appears in movies, music, novels, and dreams.
You may have crossed it in real life, but you’ve probably crossed it on screen first. Hollywood loves the Golden Gate Bridge because it’s instantly recognizable, a symbol of escape, disaster, rebirth, or simply the magic of the West Coast. It is one of Hollywood’s most filmed landmarks, appearing in dozens of movies. From Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo to X-Men. Its cinematic destruction has become almost a rite of passage in disaster films.
Despite the name, the Golden Gate Bridge isn’t golden at all. Its bold, burnt-red hue is officially called International Orange. The steel originally arrived coated in a red lead primer whose warm tone inspired consulting architect Irving Morrow, and the color he chose blends with the surrounding hills while contrasting with the blue of the ocean and sky. The U.S. Navy wanted it painted in black-and-yellow stripes. Their reasoning? Maximum visibility for ships navigating the often fog-choked Golden Gate Strait. But thankfully, that idea sank.
The Bridge District publishes the bridge’s exact color formula. It’s no secret, and the paint is designed to resist fog, salty air, and the ravages of time. The Golden Gate Bridge is in a never-ending battle with rust, salt, wind, and weather. A dedicated team of painters works year-round, applying fresh coats and removing corrosion to keep the steel safe and gleaming.
Long before anyone drove a single rivet into steel, the name “Golden Gate” already shimmered on maps. In 1846, explorer John C. Frémont called the strait a golden gate. Two years later, he formally named it “Chrysopylae”, Greek for “Golden Gate”, comparing it to the Golden Horn of Byzantium, today’s Istanbul. The name hinted at California’s promise of prosperity, even before the Gold Rush began. When the bridge was built almost a century later, it inherited a name rich with myth and meaning, an entrance not just to San Francisco, but to a golden future.
The Golden Gate Bridge, as stunning as it is, has a somber reputation. For the two decades before 2024, it averaged about 30 confirmed suicides a year. However, in a monumental effort to save lives, engineers installed a stainless steel net system beneath the span, stretching 20 feet (6 meters) from each side and hanging just 20 feet below the deck. The net is designed not just to catch, but to deter, creating a visual and psychological barrier while preserving the bridge’s iconic silhouette.
Beneath the fog and steel of this monumental construction lies a shroud of mystery. Some tell of ghostly figures drifting through the mist, footsteps echoing where no one walks, and sudden icy gusts on calm nights. Some believe the spirits of those who’ve tragically jumped from the bridge linger in the air. While there’s no scientific proof of hauntings, the stories persist.
But the Golden Gate isn’t the only one with an iconic silhouette. Across the Atlantic, a lookalike stuns visitors in Portugal.
By Matt Perich from Lausanne, Switzerland
In Lisbon, a striking red suspension bridge called the 25 de Abril Bridge looks like San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, though structurally it has more in common with the Bay Bridge. Though not an official replica, a consortium led by U.S. Steel, parent of the American Bridge Company that built the Bay Bridge, built it, and its design clearly echoes that California cousin.
The bridge was completed in 1966, nearly 30 years after the Golden Gate, and the American steel giant U.S. Steel served as its prime contractor. Officially known as the Salazar Bridge after the dictator, it was rechristened in the months after the April 25, 1974 Carnation Revolution. Unlike the Golden Gate, Lisbon’s bridge also carries rail traffic on a lower deck, making it a true double-duty giant.
So the next time you see the Golden Gate Bridge glowing in the mist, remember the battles waged to build it: lawsuits, military threats, and the wartime whispers of sabotage that followed. It withstood earthquakes, reinvented safety standards, and even played its part in winning a world war.