Research Paper On The Golden Gate Bridge

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The Golden Gate Bridge is an engineering marvel, an iconic image of San Francisco, and an important transportation structure all wrapped into one brightly colored orange bridge. The Golden Gate Bridge’s construction in the 1930’s was fraught with difficulties, but it’s completion helped to connect the already major city of San Francisco to the smaller Marin County in California. The bridge’s construction helped to create a faster route between these areas, helped to stimulate the economy, and even helped with environmental conservation. The iconic image of the Golden Gate Bridge represents the American ideals of ingenuity, freedom, travel, and the open road. The Golden Gate Bridge changed transportation not only for California, but the entire …show more content…

The bridge’s construction was started on Jan. 5, 1933, after, “Experts at the time determined that a bridge was needed in San Francisco, since it was the largest American city still using mostly ferry boats.” (Shiff, 2017.) Prior to the bridge’s construction, ferries were used to move cars across the Golden Gate Strait. The bridge was seen an engineering feat that would have been impossible, until improved construction technology made building the bridge a challenging but possible task. A bridge across the Golden Gate Strait would need to withstand high winds, tides from the bay, heavy fog, and possible seismic activity from the San Andreas fault less than 8 miles away. The bridge was designed by engineer Joseph B. Strauss and was completed on April 19, 1937. The bridge used more than one million tons of concrete to create the two main towers, and the bridge is also supported by approximately 80,000 miles of suspension cables. The Golden Gate Bridge was one of the first bridges of this magnitude and size to be built. The grand bridge connected these two sides of California, and lead to major changes for economics, transposition, and the

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