A Love of Bridges, Part 9: At the Start of the Crossing | Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco to Marin County, California (1937)

Facing northward, at the southern end of the eastern pedestrian walkway. I would also have liked to throw in some reference to the west, but nothing sprang to mind.

This is the beginning of a sequence of shots taken with my trusty Instamatic that dramatically documents the epic trek taken by a group of USS Hollister midshipmen, I among them, after we'd successfully cleaned out our ship's boiler firesides on the Fourth of July. This hike turned out to be the perfect therapy for that episode of soot-stained claustrophobia.

The Golden Gate span is about 4,800 ft = 0.8 mi = 1.46 km, but when we reached its northern terminus we continued on to the Dana Bowers Memorial Vista Point, as I will soon photographically verify. So it was a nice stroll of at least 2 mi (3.2) mi—no problem at all for young legs grateful to be absolutely anywhere on terra firma after several weeks of being heaved and rolled about by deep Pacific swells.

This particular location on the walkway is directly above Fort Point, the small headland composed of serpentinite and associated mélange rocks of the Jurassic-period Coast Range Ophiolite. In the far distance, just a little of Marin County's own headland is showing. It's composed of sandstones, cherts, and other rock types of the Jurassic-to-Cretaceous Franciscan Complex.

The bridge's southern tower looms up ahead. It, its northern counterpart, the suspension cables, and much else in view is made of steel supplied by a number of different American producers of the day.

In fact, steel is every bit as geologically derived as any building stone I feature in other posts. Essentially an alloy of iron and carbon that is considerably stronger than iron alone, it was first developed, as far as anyone now knows, around 1800 BC, in Anatolia. But modern mass production did not begin till the mid-nineteenth century AD. In modern times the main ingredient, the iron, is extracted mostly from BIFs—Banded Iron Formation deposits of Archean or Paleoproterozoic age.

Nowadays there are various kinds of steel used in architecture, from the gleaming, chromium-containing stainless variety showcased on Chicago's Inland Steel Building to the surprisingly attractive rust-coated weathering type, as seen in the same city's Daley Center and in Milwaukee's Brutalist Main Post Office.

Here on the Golden Gate, however, the steel has been painted its now-iconic vermilion color. It's not the same tint as anything under it or around it, but it magically manages to both stand out boldly and harmonize perfectly with its environment. That's no mean trick.

The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Love of Bridges album.

Taken in: United States / California / Fort Winfield Scott (show map)

Taken on: July 1, 1971

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Camera: MAKER NAME 96660, f/1.8, 1/88 sec, 2.8mm, ISO 50 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	MAKER NAME 96660
Aperture:	f/1.8
Exposure Time:	0.011 sec (1/88)
Focal Length:	2.8mm
ISO:	50
Exposure Bias:	-0.7 EV
Flash:	Auto, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Metering Mode:	Average
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Inpaint
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