BRIDGING GOLDEN GATE

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 July 1935, Page 2

BRIDGING GOLDEN GATE

LONGEST SUSPENSION SPAN. After half .a century of dreaming San Francisco is watching with interest as the world’s longest suspension span reaches upward and across the entrance to the famed harbour. Th 6 Golden Gate bridge is almost 40 per cent, completed. By May of 1937, if present plans hold, this, .greatest ot suspension structures will be ready to carry a teeming population of commuters between offices in San Francisco and homes, in “Marvellous Marin.” Already it towers high above anything else built by the hand of man in western America. Already it descends into the boiling currents of the Gate more than 100 feet. Relentless tides, fog-blinded steamers, popular scepticism, political apathy, engineering problems of unprecedented magnitude and financial difficulties in the midst of depression have been unable to dim the enthusiasm of its backers and builders. ! , There was nothing, wrong with San Francisco as a home site, but there were those who preferred the warmer and sunnier climate which a short trip out of town offered. Some went down the peninsula, others ferried across to Oakland and Berkley. A few hardy mariners undertook to cross the Golden Gate twice daily that they might live in a delightful wilderness of natural beauties within sight of the buildings of their metropolis.

DREAMS MATERIALISE.

When engineering dreams materialised in the great Brooklyn Bridge many years ago it was natural enough that these people looked wilfuly toward the two juttlug headlands between which a turbulent ocean gateway swirled, and made tentative plans for a bridge of their own. But, however, they wore out their pencils; all figures showed that a structure almost thrice as long as the Brooklyn Bridge would bo required to span the Golden Gate. Engineering problems, as well as the cost, seemed insurmountable. Many schemes were brought forward, but, after a brief period of discussion, each was forgotten. So it went until 1919, when Joseph B. Strauss looked across the Golden Gate and felt the challenge which had come to many another engineer before him. From Fort Point in the Presidio of San Fraicisco to the beetling cliffs of Marin County seemed to him a distance which the skill of man might conquer. He had to his credit many notable bridges in many parts of the world, and he felt he could throw a span across this almost 9000-foot expanse. ~ So he talked with Mr. M. M. O’Shaughnessy, late city engineer of San Francisco, who thought his idea might be feasible, and set to work planning a project which would meet all reasonable requirements, and yet bo practicable financially. Mr. O’Shaughnessy’s findings were rosy, and enlisted the enthusiastic suppoit of a number of residents on both sides of the proposed span. A Bridging of the Golden Gate Association was formed and in 1923 the State Legislature created a bridge district to supervise construction of the project.

A TEN-YEAR CRUSADE.

For ten vears. however, there were innumerable legal delays, though each decision reached was in favour of the bridge. So many hindrances, so many objections, so many doubts —from citizens, army engineers, politicians ■ might have discouraged less hardy fq-onsors. But the bridge builders were not to bo denied, and they fought on unfalteringly. Business men of Marin County and further north in Sonoma County, and further still through all the great “Redwood Empire.” became convinced that a bridge from San Francisco to then shoies would open their area to every citizen of the metropolis and to every visiting tourist. But there were others who argued in favour of the ferries, and even after actual work on the bridge started in 1933, and a tower 746 ft. high began to rise on the Marin shore, there were still scoffers who predicted that the bridge would never bo completed. However, local scepticism is now rapidly giving way to enthusiasm as the magnitude of the bridge becomes belter known. Great crowds go on. Sundays to vantage points where they may watch progress on tho structure. Influential sections of the press have taken an interest in the bridge, and defend it against unjustified criticism. Loyal employees of the Golden (>ate Bridge and Highway District spend their nights ' lecturing on the span, showing motion pictures of its buittiing, answering questions concerning it. and gradually spreading a pride in San Francisco's suspension wonder. So. with its financing completed, its payment assured through decreasing 101 l charges over a period of years, its technical problems overcome, and punlie support turning overwhelmingly toward it, the Golden Gate Bridge promises to Ii - northern California's Ma>po’o in l‘J“7. Length of main structure. height of towers abo\e water. . )<>! .. deptli of pl*'i' on San F.am isi o sid”. below water, luuft.; length of main .■ran between towers, 1200 ft : ,ola cost of bridge, 33.500.000 dollars; minimum vertical clearness nt centre above mean high water. 220 ft.