The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km), three-mile-long (4.8 km) channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the American city of San Francisco, California – the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula – to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world." It opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet (1,300 m).
Golden Gate Bridge Facts:
- In total, the bridge is 8,981 feet across (its main span being 4,200 feet). At its tallest point it is 746 feet, but only 90 feet across — 6 reversible traffic lanes and two walkways.
- The strait that passes beneath the bridge runs 400 feet deep.
- It is famously "over-engineered" — being over four times stronger than it needs to be.
- It took over four years to build and cost over $35 million.
- Amazingly, it has over 1.2 million rivets.
- Each of its twin towers weighs more than 44,000 tons and the total weight of the bridge is almost 900,000 tons.
- It is the second largest suspension bridge in the US and if you untangled all of its cables they would stretch around the world 3 times.
- It has been featured in many movies, including "Vertigo" and "Superman."
This article uses material from the Wikipedia.
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