1931 |
October: Strauss badgers Ellis to finish his work. Ellis responds by asking for Strauss' cooperation and patience in arriving at reliable mathematical expressions for the safe design of the bridge.
November: Strauss' impatience with Ellis comes to a head. Strauss instructs Ellis to go on vacation immediately.
December 5: Ellis leaves the Strauss Engineering Corporation offices for what will turn out to be the last time. Three days before his scheduled return, Ellis receives a letter from Strauss telling him not to return. Ellis will be replaced by Clifford Paine, the firm's managing engineer. All mention of Ellis is removed from bridge materials. |
1932 |
November: The District awards contracts totaling $23,843,905 for the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. |
1933 |
January 5: Construction begins. Workers excavate three and a quarter million cubic feet of dirt for the bridge's huge anchorages.
February: Workers complete the two anchorages. These colossal blocks of steel-reinforced concrete secure the main cables at each end of the bridge.
February 14: Russell B. Cone and his family arrive in San Francisco. Recruited by Strauss, Cone is appointed resident engineer. Working under Strauss and Paine, he will oversee the day-to-day construction of the bridge.
June: Workers complete the north pier, the foundation for the north tower, on the Marin shore. The pier extends 44 feet above the waterline. |
1934 |
May: Workers complete the north tower. |
1935 |
January: After agonizing difficulties trying to build in the middle of a turbulent ocean channel, workers -- including a team of underwater divers -- complete the south pier.
June: The south tower is finished.
August: Workers install a dizzying catwalk high above the water. Since the bridge's cables will be assembled in the air, the catwalk hangs three feet below the position of each cable. |
1936 |
March: Workers finish spinning the suspension cables ahead of schedule, at a rate four times faster than expected.
May 20: The cable compression is finished.
June: The most dramatic safety feature in bridge-building history is introduced at the Golden Gate Bridge work site. A large net is slung under the entire bridge, at a cost of over $130,000. It hangs 60 feet below the construction workers, and ultimately saves 19 lives. Workers perform tasks more quickly and confidently, knowing the net is in place. The men who survive falls into the net call themselves the "Halfway-to-Hell Club."
September: The roadway steel is finished.
October 21: The first man killed in the building of the bridge is Kermit Moore, who is crushed by a support beam that falls. |
1937 |
February 17: Eleven workers lose their lives when a platform holding 13 men falls off the bridge and through the safety net. Two workers, Slim Lambert and Oscar Osberg, somehow survive the fall and the plunge into icy water. Lambert suffers a broken shoulder, a broken collar bone, broken ribs, a broken neck, a broken back and two horribly twisted ankles. Osberg is pulled alive from the water with a fractured hip, a broken leg, and massive internal injuries.
March 3: Workers install a new safety net.
April 15: Workers complete the deck surface. It hangs like a massive hammock between the two towers, suspended from the cables by 254 sets of vertical suspender ropes, each positioned 50 feet apart. Despite delays, the bridge has taken only four and a half months longer to build than originally planned.
May 27: The Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrians for the first time. At 6am, 18,000 people are waiting to be the first to cross the bridge in some unique manner -- first on stilts, first backwards, and so on. San Francisco's week-long celebration is called "The Golden Gate Bridge Fiesta."
May 28: The bridge opens to vehicles after President Franklin Roosevelt presses a telegraph key in the White House announcing the occasion to the whole world. The bridge has opened ahead of schedule and under budget. In the first hours, 1,800 cars pass over the bridge. By midnight, 32,300 vehicles and 19,350 pedestrians have paid tolls and crossed.
Early summer: Joseph Strauss resigns from the District. |
1938 |
March 28: Strauss suffers a heart attack.
May 16: Strauss dies at the age of sixty-eight, eleven days short of the first anniversary of his magnificent bridge's opening. |
1941 |
May 28: Officials dedicate a monument to Joseph Strauss at a magnificent spot below the bridge toll plaza. |
1949 |
August 22: Charles Ellis dies at an Evanston, Illinois hospital. Whether he ever saw the completed Golden Gate Bridge prior to his death is unknown. |
1951 |
December 1: A howling 69-mile-per-hour windstorm blows through the Golden Gate, shaking the bridge's steel towers. The storm is so bad that the roadway starts to ripple. When one side starts pitching 11 feet higher than the other, bridge officials close the span for the first time in its 14-year history. Casual inspection the next day shows little damage. |
Mid 1950s |
Judson-Pacific Murphy of South San Francisco is awarded $3.5 million to stiffen girders underneath the bridge roadway. |
1968 |
October: The first one-way toll system in the world starts on the Golden Gate Bridge. Motorists can pay a round-trip toll in one direction and cross without stopping to pay in the other direction. |
Early 1970s |
All suspender ropes are replaced after inspectors find corrosion near the gusset plates at the intersection of some ropes and the floor system chords. |
1971 |
The last of the construction bonds is retired. Bridge tolls have financed $35 million in principal and nearly $39 million in interest. |
1985 |
February 22: The one billionth car crosses the bridge.
August 15: Construction is finished on a new orthotropic steel plate deck. |
1987 |
May 24: The Golden Gate Bridge celebrates its 50th anniversary. |
1993 |
Following a year-long study, the Historical Review Committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers declares that Ellis, working with Moisseiff, is "the technical and theoretical brains behind the design of the bridge" and deserves to be honored. |
1994 |
February 16: The American Society of Civil Engineers names the Golden Gate Bridge one of the "Seven Wonders of the Modern World" along with other massive American creations: the Hoover Dam, the Interstate Highway System, the Kennedy Space Center, the Panama Canal, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline and the World Trade Center. |
