Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins
On this day · 5 January 1933
Crews broke ground on a span many engineers had insisted could never be built across the Golden Gate.
On January 5, 1933, work began on the Golden Gate Bridge, as crews started excavating roughly 3.25 million cubic feet of dirt for the structure’s massive anchorages at the mouth of San Francisco Bay.
The project launched in the depths of the Great Depression, when steady wages were precious and skeptics insisted a bridge across the treacherous, fog-bound strait simply could not be done. Chief engineer Joseph Strauss and his team disagreed, and a formal ground-breaking ceremony followed weeks later at Crissy Field.
Four and a half years of dangerous, wind-whipped labor produced one of the world’s most recognizable structures. When it opened in May 1937, its main span was the longest of any suspension bridge on Earth.
The builders also pioneered safety measures rare for the era, including a vast net strung beneath the deck. For a country short on optimism, the rising towers offered a stubborn promise that big things were still possible.
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