Golden Gate Bridge
| Golden Gate Bridge | |
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A view of the Golden Gate Bridge from the Marin Headlands
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| Coordinates | 37°49′11″N 122°28′43″W / 37.81972°N 122.47861°WCoordinates: 37°49′11″N 122°28′43″W / 37.81972°N 122.47861°W |
| Carries | 6 lanes of   US 101 / SR 1 (see below), pedestrians and bicycles. |
| Crosses | Golden Gate |
| Locale | San Francisco, California and Marin County, California, U.S. |
| Official name | Golden Gate Bridge |
| Maintained by | Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District |
| Characteristics | |
| Design | Suspension, truss arch & truss causeways |
| Material | Steel |
| Total length | 8,981 ft (2,737.4 m), about 1.7 mi (2.7 km) |
| Width | 90 ft (27.4 m) |
| Height | 746 ft (227.4 m) |
| Longest span | 4,200 ft (1,280.2 m) |
| Clearance above | 14 ft (4.3 m) at toll gates, Trucks cannot pass |
| Clearance below | 220 ft (67.1 m) at high tide |
| History | |
| Designer | Joseph Strauss, Irving Morrow, and Charles Ellis |
| Construction begin | January 5, 1933 |
| Construction end | April 19, 1937 |
| Opened | May 27, 1937 |
| Statistics | |
| Daily traffic | 110,000 |
| Toll | Cars (southbound only) $7.50 (Pay by plate), $6.50 (FasTrak), $4.50 (carpools during peak hours, FasTrak only) |
| Designated | June 18, 1987 |
| Reference no. | 974 |
| Designated | May 21, 1999 |
| Reference no. | 222 |
 Golden Gate Bridge
Bridges in the San Francisco Bay
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The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km), three-mile-long (4.8 km) channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the American city of San Francisco, California – the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula – to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait. The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.
The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world." It opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet (1,300 m).
Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay. A ferry service began as early as 1820, with a regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San Francisco.
The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s. Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy. The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US$1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge. The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes.
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Wikipedia