Celebrating Golden Gate Bridge’s 50th Birthday

In this year of historic anniversary celebrations all across the United States, one already capturing national and world interest will be staged on, over and beside San Francisco Bay on Sunday, May 24.

That date has been named the Golden Anniversary Day of Golden Gate Bridge--and don’t forget to bring your walking shoes.

A Bridge Walk for visitors and Bay Area residents, as well as for TV and radio audiences, will be held to relive the excitement of the Grand Opening day in 1937 when 200,000 people walked, strolled, ran and danced across Golden Gate Bridge.

Transcontinental Message

That first Pedestrian Day began 24 hours before President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pressed a telegraph button in Washington to open the long-awaited bridge to automobile traffic.

The 1937 opening day for footloose celebrants really was on May 27, but it has been moved ahead three days this anniversary year to a Sunday to accommodate as many participants as possible.

Several pedestrian-only hours will be set this May 24 for the memorial Bridge Walk that will bring back some who walked it 50 years earlier. Many Bridge Walkers who were not born half a century ago will be dressed in fashions of the 1930s.

Foghorns will blare even in the hoped-for sunshine, and cannons will boom across the bay as soon as the official chain-cutting ceremony is completed at the San Francisco approach to the bridge and the redwood log sawing has been staged at the Marin County entrance.

As soon as F.D.R. telegraphed the opening of the bridge on that May noon in 1937, 500 Navy aircraft zoomed overhead. Bells, whistles, horns and sirens created a grand cacophony around the bay.

The Wings of Gold vintage planes will return May 24 as part of a salute to the Golden Age of Transportation. Two groups of Stearman aircraft, one from the east and one from the west, will cross flight paths in a winged salute to the bridge that has been a symbol of welcome to uncounted millions of travelers, immigrants and men and women returning from overseas service to their country.

Sailing Under the Span

A fleet of naval, commercial and pleasure craft will sail under the span that became one of the engineering wonders of the world when its roadway was suspended at a 19-story height above the surging waters of the strait between the bay and the Pacific Ocean. The fleet will include vessels and yachts from past eras of shipping and sailing.

Spotlighting the importance of the Golden Gate Bridge to the development of San Francisco and all of Northern California, a Cavalcade of Cars will follow the Bridge Walk. Vintage automobiles will carry celebrities, public officials and bridge workers.

In the afternoon a free Golden Gate Concert will be staged by internationally known producer Bill Graham beside the bay in Crissy Field, against the backdrop of the bridge. An expected audience of more than 100,000 will be entertained by a range of performing artists and musical groups including Huey Lewis & the News, the Grateful Dead, Tony Bennett and the Turk Murphy Jazz Band.

For the evening, arrangements are being finalized for the San Francisco Symphony to take over in Crissy Field. The dramatic pageant finale will then expand to five locations including Crissy Field and Ft. Baker, with space for an estimated 1.5 million spectators.

Planes and sky divers carrying golden flares will present the national colors. Local and national dignitaries will address the vast live and national TV audience. Voices all around the bay and city will join in a 50-second countdown. As many as 10,000 watercraft will be gathered in the bay to participate in the climactic moments.

The telegraph key used by President Roosevelt will be pressed, and the two 746-foot bridge towers--soaring to the height of 65-story buildings--will be illuminated with their new golden display of lights to fulfill the dream of Joseph Strauss, designer of the bridge, and the many others who did so much to make it a reality.

Grand ‘Happy Birthday’

Voices around the bay will join in one of the grandest renditions of “Happy Birthday” ever heard. Then many nations will join in one of the largest international displays of fireworks ever presented in North America.

Ready for this gala day and evening will be the renovation of the Roundhouse near the bridge’s toll plaza into a visitor information center that will include historical displays.

A Memorial Garden near the Roundtower will honor the workers who built the bridge and the 11 who died in its construction. “Bridges to History” is a project that will compile oral histories of bridge workers and developers.

My wife, Elfriede, and I had the rare opportunity to prepare for our preview bridge walk by talking with Pauline Scott, a gracious 89-year-old lady and longtime family friend who participated in the 1937 opening-day bridge walk with her husband, Dr. Allen Scott, a dentist.

Pauline Scott, who lives now in Palm Springs and supports many state and national conservation and public service efforts, re-created for us the feeling of “a day of excitement, beauty and meaning that was one of the most memorable experiences Allen and I shared all around the world.”

Mile-Long Span

Sunlight and blue skies remained with us throughout the rest of the afternoon of walking back and forth across the mile-long span of the bridge, then to the hillcrests above it on the Marin side of the bay.

We shared the sidewalk beside the railing with joggers and fellow strollers. On one plaque we read the words of John C. Fremont, who gave the Golden Gate its name. The famed explorer and lieutenant in the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers wrote in 1848: “Between these points is the strait about 1 mile broad in the narrowest part and 5 miles long from sea to bay. To this I give the name of Chrysopolae, or Golden Gate.”

As early as 1869 eccentric “Emperor” Norton I decreed that a Golden Gate bridge was not an impossible challenge. But it remained virtually so until San Francisco City Engineer M. M. O’Shaughnessy received authority in 1919 to ask for plans and estimates.

Visionary engineer Joseph Strauss submitted a design and plan in 1921 that would cost $17 million in the dollars of that era. By 1928 new metal technologies made it possible for him to fine-tune his design into a 4,200-foot suspension bridge, a far-out concept that would also require the first bridge foundation ever constructed in the open sea.

Eighty thousand miles of wire were required for the two largest bridge cables ever made, enough to circle the earth more than three times at the Equator.

Ground was officially broken on Feb. 16, 1933. Storms, earthquakes and a ship that collided with work in progress at times delayed construction, which continued high above churning tides created both by the ocean and 10 rivers pouring into San Francisco Bay.

Swinging Floor

Under the impact of a broadside gale of 100 m.p.h., the bridge floor at mid-span might swing as much as 21 feet out to one side. Temperatures and load factors could cause a rise or drop of 10 feet at mid-span.

Nets beneath the construction cushioned the falls of 19 men who otherwise would have been killed. Ten died in one accident when their platform tore through the safety net only three months before the bridge was completed.

The project came in at $35 million and would cost more than $600 million today. Repainting in orange vermilion to preserve the bridge takes about 48 months, and then the work starts all over again.

Last year the billionth car crossed the bridge; an average of 100,000 vehicles crosses daily. The round-trip toll of $2 weekdays and $1 Sundays goes toward maintenance.

Many-Faceted Celebration

On Friday morning May 22, from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., KGO radio station, official voice of the birthday celebration, will pay all tolls for commuters. Station personalities dressed in tuxedos will wave cars through the toll booths.

The anniversary celebration is being coordinated by Friends of the Golden Gate Bridge, a nonprofit organization, with Charlotte Maillard, chief of protocol for the city, serving as chairperson. General Electric is providing lighting equipment and engineering expertise for permanent lighting of the towers. Pacific Gas & Electric has contributed $420,000 toward bridge lighting.

The international community has become involved. Funding for the Memorial Garden has been contributed by the Bank of Canton. Consul generals from Australia, Canada, Japan, Peru, the U.S.S.R., Chile, Ecuador and Korea on the Pacific Rim have attended 50th-anniversary planning sessions.

A long-term project of visitor interest is a permanent Golden Gate Bridge Museum. The Friends of the Golden Gate Bridge anniversary office is at 2 Embarcadero Center, Suite 590, San Francisco 94111, (415) 421-1987.