28 Mar San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge
While most folks recognize the famous bridge which spans the San Francisco Bay, not as many men and women know about its history. Though it was once a recently finished happening, the bridge has been around now for 2 decades. The people who assembled it, watching it rise to become a silhouette spanning the bay’s skyline, are all gone.
When it was discussed, the cost for the bridge was. Exorbitant and people were not sure where the money would come in to pay for it. What ended up covering the price is a rather remarkable story in and of itself. People living in San Francisco and the surrounding area were asked this: Should something goes wrong with the bridge, or if it were destroyed before it was paid off, would they be willing to put liens in their homes to cover it? They agreed, and the project went.
The bridge was begun in January of 1933, and four years later, in May of 1937, it formally opened, a viable solution for the city’s growing traffic congestion problems. The bridge remains an engineering marvel, the burden of it being supported by wires that run up and above the legendary orange towers. It was crafted with movement in your mind, able to move as much as 10 feet downwards, or 6 feet in the other way, and one travels 1.7 miles when moving over it.
Because it had been constructed during the famous melancholy of the 1930s, work was rare and finding work with great pay was a decoration to come by. Workers on the bridge had been becoming paid around $11/day, a good salary at the time, but the work was perilous and required rigorous attention to stay secure at work. A security net was installed with the express purpose of grabbing anyone that dropped, a supply which ended up saving 19 lives. (Because the structure is so high above the water, anybody falling from the bridge will likely not survive. The force of this impact is compared to a car hitting a brick wall at a speed of 80 mph) Dangerous task aside, though, people would hang out in the building site, cooking their food, waiting for an individual working over to drop in hopes of getting that individual’s job. (#slightlydisturbing)
The big steel cables that hold the bridge up are 3 ft in diameter. And, even though they seem like one solid piece of steel in the outside, they are actually assembled of 27,572 individual cables bundled together and covered with an exterior plate of steel. Every one of these massive main cables is 7,650 ft long. And, since it’s constructed from steel and also built in an environment subjected to salt and water, the bridge requires continuous upkeep. Now, over 100 individuals work full-time in the bridge enforcing security and performing the essential care to make sure its longevity by preventing rust.
And what about its colour? During preparation, black and gray were indicated choices, and the navy was really hoping that the bridge could be painted with black and yellow stripes. (Hello awful finished product!) The color that has been chosen, however, came about as a bit of fortuitous happenstance. The primer paint that was used gave the metal an orange hue, a color which complemented the surrounding region and helped make the bridge visible in fog. So, finally they moved with orange crimson and it stuck.
No one would argue that the finished product remains, now, among the most well-known landmarks around the west shore of america. And that’s what sightseeing is about: seeing locations an area is known for and coming to better understand the tales that constitute our country’s history. As a motorcoach company, we love providing a method for tour groups to see what they wish to see, from San Francisco to New York City. Selecting to GoMotorcoach means that your team can take in the sites together, permitting your driver to look after the parking and driving concerns while you consume all there is to see and do. For whatever sightseeing adventure is around the corner on your calendar, let our charter bus Houston, Texas come along and take care of the transportation!
(The information for this article came from the following source: