GOLDEN GATE BRIDGE
We’ve been waiting for a calm, sunny day to walk over the Golden Gate Bridge and this is one of the first we’ve had here. It’s Easter weekend and Spring Break, and even though we know that thousands of other tourists will be streaming towards the same area, we are ready to walk. Not too hard to find it, it does stick out over the skyline. We had gotten there early enough to find a parking spot along the sea wall and began our walk although we were not early enough to be the first, nor the hundredth on the walk. It was packed even as we started. Tour busses were letting people off to walk out on it, tourists on rented bikes were streaming across and local bike clubs were massing to cross. We joined the throng.
And, what a happy throng it was. Families all smapping pictures, oohing and aahing, and and craning their necks over the protective wall to see beneath it. Of course, we were all stunned when a helicopter dove beneath us seemingly aimed for the water but, no, it came up on the other side. Is that legal? Well, I wouldn’t think so but that helicopter was back twice more to dive beneath it. Looks like some tourists were getting an extra special ride.
When the bridge was conceived, it was thought of as impossible. At that time, ferries carried cars and passengers across the bay but these took time, were not particularly efficient and could only carry so many cars at a time. There had long been a desire for a bridge but the narrowness of the channel and the speed of the tides through this narrow channel made spanning this gulf an almost insurmountable task. Many contributed to the engineering, but Joseph Strauss was chosen as the chief engineer. The Art Deco style and motifs were designed by Irving Morrow and his wife, Gertrude.
The steel was fabricated in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, carried by train to the coast then by boat through the Panama Canal and up the coast to San Francisco. It was unloaded in the Bethlehem yards in Oakland, laid out in sections and like a tinker toy or a lego building, was transported to the actual construction site as each piece was needed. Imagine the logistics of this, getting the right steel part to the right part of the bridge at the right time.
The bridge was actually built between 1933 and 1937 when it opened to vehicular traffic on May 28. During its construction, up until February of 1937, only 1 man had died during constuction, which was astonishing considering how many men had actually worked on the bridge. This was due to the nets which Strauss had strung beneath the construction the full length of the bridge. However, in February of 1937, 10 men fell to their deaths when the scaffolding beneath them broke, tumbled through and broke the netting and the men fell also. 19 men were saved by the safety netting and they were forever known as the ‘Halfway to Hell’ club.
It has towers of 746’ which made them the tallest structures west of the Empire State Building in New York. The 4200’ main span of the bridge is still one of the longest bridge spans in a suspension bridge in the world. It is actually ‘overengineered’ to be 5 times stronger than it needs to be and able to sway 27’ to withstand the wind gusts which hit it constantly. Since its completion, the Golden Gate Bridge has been closed due to weather conditions only three times because of gusts of 69 mph, 70 mph and one of 75 mph. The length of the steel wires used to make the cables of the bridge is enough to circle the earth 3 times.
More than 41 million vehicles corss the bridge annually at a maximum speed of 45 mph, in 6 lanes of traffic. However, the middle two lanes can be changed to a different direction should traffic requite this. Here you can see the traffic on a Saturday in April. Pretty steady and impressive.
The Golden Gate Bridge has always been painted orange vermilion, deemed ‘International Orange’. It certainly makes it visible both for tourists and for ships entering the harbor. Now, of course the navy would like to paint it yellow with black stripes or pink with orange polka dots to make it evern more visible but that has always been rejected in favor of International Orange. And, here is the formula should you like to make this for the color scheme of your living room:
CMYK colors are: C= Cyan: 0%, M =Magenta: 69%, Y =Yellow: 100%, K = Black: 6%.
Haven’t we all heard that when painters get to one end of the bridge, they start over again. Nope, we learned that painting is an ongoing task and part of the maintenance of the bridge. The salt in the ocean causes rusting of the steel components of the bridge and the paint protects them. There is a crew of maintenance men and painters who take care of the bridge. They must be a particular type since they must climb up the bridge for the repairs and painting.
Unfortunately, the bridge is the number one spot in the world for suicides. That is why there are several crisis hot line phones placed along the bridge walkway.
FORT POINT
Below the bridge on the San Francisco side is Fort Point.
The site for Fort Point had been fortified originally by the Spanish who fortified the cliff where the harbor entrance was its narrowest so that the Russians and British could not encroach upon their territory. After the Spanish came the Mexicans and then the United States. The current fort was built between 1853 and 1861 by the Army Corps of Engineers. They wanted the fort built close to the water so that the lowest tier of cannon balls could ricochet off the water’s surface to hit enemy wooden ships at the water line. Thus, they blasted the 90’ cliff down to 15’ above the water line. The fort was built of brick with walls about 7’ thick to withstand attack. It also could fire hot shot since it had furnaces to heat the shot up. Imagine the damage these could cause on the wooden ships of the era.
The commandant of the Fort at this time was Colonel Albert Johnston from Tennessee who prepared the defenses of the Fort and ordered the first troops to the fort. He then resigned his command and joined the Confederate Army. How honorable is that?
It even had a sod roof to lessen the impact of incoming shot.
During the Civil War, soldiers stood guard and the guns were primed waiting for a Confederate attack which never came, though the CSS Shenandoah was nearing the harbor but the war ended before it could get there.
Interestingly, even as the fort was being built, it was being outmoded by stronger guns and ammunition which could penetrate masonry walls as was proven at Fort Sumter. Shortly after the Civil War troops left the fort and it was never again used as a defensive fort. It has however been used for training, barracks and for storage. It was also fortified during WWII and soldiers were stationed here to guard the minefields placed outside the harbor and the anti-submarine net that spanned the Golden Gate.
It is a beautiful old fort and we were impressed with the brickwork. The masons were the top of their craft. Note the smooth lines of the archways,
the detail work of the ceilings,
and finally, note the thickness of the walls around the powder room.
Plans for the Golden Gate Bridge in the 1930s called for the fort's removal, but Chief Engineer Joseph Strauss redesigned the bridge to save the fort. "While the old fort has no military value now," Strauss said, "it remains nevertheless a fine example of the mason's art.... It should be preserved and restored as a national monument." Thus he designed the Golden Gate Bridge with an arch over the Fort to preserve it.
We then walked along the sea wall up towards some old hangers left over from WWI. We saw lots of people over there and, curious, we peered in.
Seems that the hangers have been taken over by some commercial businesses. This hanger was taken over by a climbing outfit. They had climbing walls of every size with every angle. We were really impressed with what these climbers could do. Here’s a guy clinging to the bottom of a wall.
I also noticed that there were lots of women - I’d say about 1/2 of the climbers were female.
As we were watching all this through the windows, a climber came up to us and told us that we could come in. Oh, shucks and I’ve left my belt back in the RV. Maybe tomorrow.
And we headed home.
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