Golden Gate Bridge - San Francisco, CA
Posted by: ucdvicky
N 37° 48.839 W 122° 28.655
10S E 545982 N 4185304
San Francisco's most iconic landmark.
Waymark Code: WM2QK1
Location: California, United States
Date Posted: 12/08/2007
Views: 113
From: California: A Guide to the Golden State.
"Main San Francisco approach from the Presidio, was designed by Joseph B. Strauss, and completed in May 1937 at a cost of $35,500,000. The huge web-like span, illuminated at night with strings of yellow sodium vapor lights, suspended high above the water, links northern California to the peninsula of San Francisco. Two enormous steel towers, erected on concrete piers, act as props and hold up the giant"clothes line" cables from which the bridge is hung. The massive steel framework of these towers consists of two soaring steel legs which rise in five tapering stages, with heavy diagonal and horizontal cross braces or struts to the cable saddles at the top. The legs of the tower, each 32 feet by 53 feet, rise 746 feet above the water (the height of a 65-story building). The skeleton super-structure of the towers, together with the steel framework of the bridge floor and the sweeping cables, forms an impressive silhouette. The main central span, 4,200 feet in length, is the longest single span in the world. The minor spans at either end are each 1,125 feet in length. Above are the two sagging cables, each more than a yard in diameter and fastened at both shores to huge concrete anchorages. The
suspended floor structure is 90 feet wide and 25 feet deep, and supports a reinforced concrete six-lane roadway and sidewalks. The center of the span clears the water by 220 feet. At the south end ofthe bridge proper are a large steel arch passing over Fort Winfield Scott, four 125-foot truss spans, and finally the Toll Plaza, from which lead two roads, one to the northeastern section of San Francisco and the other southward. The Marin County end of the bridge has five 175-foot truss spans and is in Fort Baker, a U. S. Army reservation."
Now days the bridge is a major tourist attraction. People can now walk across to Marin county. There's even a gift shop on the San Francisco side.
Book: California
Page Number(s) of Excerpt: 287-288
Year Originally Published: 1939
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