When it comes to man-made landmarks in the United States, the Golden Gate Bridge ranks up there with the best of them. Along with its iconic design and color (known as International Orange and chosen for its high visibility in the often fog-shrouded area), the bridge has also shown remarkable utility and durability, having stayed open with very few exceptions since May 27, 1937. It remained the longest suspension bridge in the world until the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opened in 1964 in New York.

On May 27, the Golden Gate Bridge celebrated the 75th anniversary of its opening with a variety of activities and exhibits throughout the spring and summer, highlighted by last weekend's Golden Gate Festival.

Like any great American infrastructure project, there were ambitious visionaries who soldiered on even when told it couldn't be done, seemingly insurmountable technical problems, effective and ineffective bureaucrats, lots and lots of litigation and many, many skilled craftsmen and laborers whose names have been lost to history. And one helluva beautiful bridge when all was said and done.

Until the opening of the bridge, which was a tremendous engineering challenge, crossing the Golden Gate Strait that separates San Francisco from Marin County to the north involved taking a ferry across turbulent waters or driving quite a distance around, a several-hour trip. Originally envisioned by a railroad entrepreneur in the 1870s, the Golden Gate Bridge was championed by James Wilkins, an engineer and an editor at the San Francisco Call Bulletin, who caught the attention of San Francisco city engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy. In 1919, O'Shaughnessy began soliciting ideas and estimates from engineers throughout the country. He found his man in Joseph Strauss, a Cincinnati-born engineer (and poet; seriously) who was exactly the sort of visionary such a project needed. Strauss not only assembled the right technical team; he also had the chutzpah to push such an ambitious project to a skeptical populace. His unrelenting advocacy had a lot to do with the project actually coming to fruition.

Photo by Charles W. Cushman, courtesy of Indiana University Archives

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