How Long is the Golden Gate Bridge?

The Golden Gate Bridge would span a distance of 4,200 feet, once completed.

(Sound of construction and triumphant music)
But the spirit of San Francisco was not to be vanquished. From here, there is a beautiful panorama of modern San Francisco. The city rose like a phoenix from the ashes of 1906, and energetically, marched into the modern age, hosting two World's Fairs and ultimately built an unmistakable symbol of San Francisco's pride of place, the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge-75 years young this year!

Two slender cables support a six-lane roadway; held aloft by two soaring towers. An unmistakable profile and the world's most familiar image of California. In the 1930s while the Golden Gate Bridge was under construction, people from San Francisco stood along the shore including where you are now, watching as mechanical looms spun the giant cables in midair. For four years, from January 1933 to April 1937, bridge construction proceeded. Upon opening in May 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world. The middle span between the 44,000-ton towers stretches 4,200 feet. Even today, few suspension bridges are as long, and none more spectacular. It is a wonder of the world, and San Francisco's own golden gateway. (music crescendo) However, even this towering arches can be entirely engulfed in fog. Fog-even with lights, bells, buoys and horns-fog. Fog remains a constant danger.

Directly below you, on the beach, there are the remains of the original Lifesaving Service boathouse. Stations like this were built on the West Coast beginning in 1874. This one was built in 1911, and manned by lifesavers, primarily rugged Scandinavian sailors, whose purpose was to rescue shipwrecked souls. Their motto: You have to go out, but you don't have to come back. Nine surfmen were assigned here. The station was equipped with a boathouse with rail launch way, surfboat, lifeboat, a line cannon breeches buoy, and a beach cart. To your left, on the hill are white houses. The lifesaving crew lived there, in a house with a tower above it-a perfect perch from which to observe the entire Strait.

The worst maritime disaster in these waters happened in 1901, when the steamer City of Rio de Janeiro was caught up in the fog and struck rocks somewhere on the San Francisco side of the strait. The lives of 128 passengers were lost when the ship quickly filled with water and sank. There was no time for the Lifesavers to get to the stricken ship.

Please continue to the sign on the right of the cement bridge.