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Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Golden Gate Bridge (Photo of the Day)

Seventy-eight years ago today, on January 5, 1933, construction began on what would become one of the most iconic landmarks in the United States the Golden Gate Bridge. The bridge separates San Francisco from Marin county and sits astride where San Francisco Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. The main span, which runs 4,200 feet long, is suspended from two cables hung from towers 746 feet high, and at midpoint the roadway is 265 feet above mean high water. For 27 years from its completion in 1937, the Golden Gate Bridge had the longest main span of any bridge in the world (surpassed in 1964 by the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City, but as Britannica’s article states, the bridge “remains incomparable in the magnificence of its setting.”


Here are just a few photos from Britannica’s archives on this majestic bridge.

Robert Glusic/Getty Images
Getty Images
Fog enveloping the Golden Gate Bridge, which spans the entrance to San Francisco Bay in northern California; MedioImages/Getty Images
MedioImages/Getty Images
The Golden Gate Bridge; Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images
Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images
Golden Gate Bridge; Getty Images
Getty Images
Martin M-130 “flying boat,” China Clipper, passing over the partially completed Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, on its first day of commercial transpacific service, November 22, 1935; Courtesy of Pan American World Airways, Inc.
The China Clipper passing over the partially completed Golden Gate Bridge, November 22, 1935
Courtesy of Pan American World Airways, Inc.

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