Why is the Golden Gate Bridge so famous?

Acclaimed as one of the world's most beautiful bridges, there are many different elements to the Golden Gate Bridge that make it unique. With its tremendous towers, sweeping cables, and great span, the Bridge is a sensory beauty and engineering wonder featuring color, sound and light.



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5 Fun Facts About the Golden Gate Bridge
  • The bridge is actually not golden at all! It's a bright red-orange.
  • It was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.
  • It took four years to build.
  • There are approximately 600,000 rivets in each of the bridge's towers.
  • It's the most photographed bridge in the world.


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The color came about thanks to Irving Morrow, the Golden Gate's consulting architect, who noticed the striking reddish-orange primer painted on some of the steel. Morrow designed the bridge's lighting and its art-deco styling. He also championed the unusual color.

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The Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District is a special-purpose district that owns and operates three regional transportation assets in the San Francisco Bay Area: the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, the Golden Gate Ferry system and the Golden Gate Transit system.

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Taking all factors into consideration, the assessed value of the Golden Gate Bridge is around $10 billion.

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What is a weakness of the Golden Gate Bridge? They can be unstable in extremely turbulent conditions, requiring temporary closure of the bridge. Suspension bridges are built to move, and high wind can cause damage to the bridge.

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Once called “the bridge that couldn't be built,” today the Golden Gate Bridge is one the seven wonders of the modern world. This magnificent span, perhaps San Francisco's most famous landmark, opened in 1937 after a four-year struggle against relentless winds, fog, rock and treacherous tides.

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According to the book The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, suspension and truss bridges would collapse after two or three centuries without maintenance. The cause would be rust eventually filling the expansion joints, causing damage during hot weather.

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