Golden Gate / Muir Woods / Muir Beach 15.9.09

The real “Golden Gate” is the strait that the bridge spans. It was first named “Chrysopylae,” meaning “golden gate,” by Captain John C. Fremont in 1846.

The Golden Gate Bridge was the longest span in the world from its completion until the Verrazano Narrows Bridge was built in New York in 1964. Today, it still has the seventh-longest main span in the world.

One of the most interesting Golden Gate Bridge facts is that only eleven workers died during construction, a new safety record for the time. In the 1930s, bridge builders expected 1 fatality per $1 million in construction costs, and builders expected 35 people to die while building the Golden Gate Bridge. One of the bridge’s safety innovations was a net suspended under the floor. This net saved the lives of 19 men during construction, and they are often called the members of the “Half Way to Hell Club.”

• Steel Facts:
  • Made in New Jersey, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and shipped through the Panama Canal.
  • Total weight of steel: 83,000 tons (75,293,000 kg).
• Cable Facts:
  • Two main cables pass over the tops of the main towers and are secured in concrete anchorages at each end. Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. There are 80,000 miles (129,000 km) of wire in the two main cables, and it took over six months to spin them.
  • Cable diameter (including wrapping): 36 3/8 inches (0.92 m).
  • Cable length: 7,260 feet (2,332 m).
• Lights:
  • 128 lights are installed on the bridge roadway. They are 250-watt high pressure sodium lamps installed in 1972.
  • The 24 tower sidewalk lights are 35-watt low pressure sodium lamps.
  • 12 light illuminate each tower, 400 watts each, and an airway beacon tops each tower.

Golden Gate Bridge Facts – Traffic

• Average crossings: About 40 million per year, counting both north- and southbound crossings, compared to 33 million crossing the first year it was open.
• Fewest crossings: January, 1982, during a storm which closed U. S. 101 north of the bridge. On January 6, only 3,921 southbound vehicles passed the toll gates.
• Most crossings: October 17, 1989, after the Loma Prieta earthquake, when Bay Bridge was closed. 162,414 vehicles (counting those going both directions) crossed the bridge that day.
• Total crossings: Through October 30, 2002, the Golden Gate Bridge Highway District says 1,754,094,967 vehicles crossed the bridge.

Coast Redwoods are the main attraction in Muir Woods—one of Northern California’s most noted National Parks and the nations seventh National Monument.

Coast Redwoods are the tallest living things some reach as high as 368 feet tall. Walking among them is an experience you won’t want to miss.

These trees, which range as far south as Big Sur and as far north as the California-Oregon boarder, are taller but not as big around as the Giant Sequoias in Yosemite National Park.

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