After four years of construction and eleven worker deaths, the Golden Gate Bridge opened to foot traffic, with some 200,000 people walking across before cars were allowed the next day. Its Art Deco towers and International Orange color made it an instant icon, and its 4,200-foot main span held the suspension-bridge record for nearly three decades.
Chief engineer Joseph Strauss had spent over a decade fighting skeptics who insisted the strait's currents and winds made a bridge impossible. Ferry companies lobbied hard against it, fearing lost business, and the U.S. Navy worried a bridge would obstruct shipping lanes. Strauss persisted, refining his design with input from engineers Charles Ellis and Leon Moisseiff, who pushed for a more elegant suspension structure than his original clunky hybrid plan.
On opening day, so-called "Pedestrian Day," the crowd was so dense that the bridge deck reportedly flattened out under the weight, a phenomenon some walkers felt as a strange bouncing sensation underfoot. Vendors sold hot dogs and souvenirs along the span. The bridge's construction had prioritized worker safety unusually for its era, including a mandatory safety net that saved 19 men who fell and jokingly called themselves the "Halfway to Hell Club." Eleven other workers died, mostly in a single 1937 scaffolding collapse.
The bridge's International Orange hue, chosen partly for visibility in fog, became so associated with the structure that it is now trademarked. It remains one of the most photographed man-made structures on Earth.
Key people: Joseph Strauss, Charles Ellis, Leon Moisseiff