20 Years Later, Span Is Loved and Loathed

You see it from a distance, and it’s like the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. It’s like this gorgeous woman--mysterious, alluring, powerful. It gives me such a great feeling when I see it on the way back from visiting my mom near Long Beach. It makes me feel at home, like I’m part of something special.

--Phillip Needham, tow truck driver, San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge

In the beginning, it was a symbol of devastation. A lot of people feel it ruined Barrio Logan. When it first opened, it had a terrible, terrific impact. But now it’s a piece of living art. It has a melodic effect on my life, my vision. It’s a strange thing to say, but I love the bridge. --Salvador Torres, artist in Barrio Logan

I think it stinks.

--Donald P. Murphy, Coronado resident

Twenty years ago, in the same summer as Woodstock and man’s walk on the moon, a bridge was opened, linking the sleepy peninsula of Coronado with one of the country’s fastest-growing cities.

This bridge would change the nature of two neighborhoods forever.

This bridge would alter political fortunes.

This bridge would serve as an avenue of suicide for the nearly 150 people who leaped to their deaths from its tallest point, and as a way to sustain life for an endangered species, the peregrine falcon.

This bridge would inspire envy, resentment, awe and avarice. This bridge would serve as an easel for a new form of urban art. This bridge would end one method of transportation and give rise to another.

This bridge would, in the summer of peace and love, inspire anything but.

Twenty years ago today, on Aug. 2, 1969, when the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge was officially opened, Robert L. Wynn, then city manager of Coronado, remembers riding across the majestic span in a 1918 Duesenberg, thinking, “I don’t believe it--it’s happened!”

Since 1971, Wynn has been city manager of Newport Beach. He has no problem recalling the conflict that preceded and followed the building of the bridge.

“It was voted on three times in advisory elections and defeated every time,” Wynn said. “Truth is, the people of Coronado never wanted the bridge.”

But Gov. Edmund G. (Pat) Brown did. Wynn said it was the partnership of Brown and John Alessio, then owner of the Hotel del Coronado and Brown’s wealthiest backer, that eventually linked San Diego to Coronado by a method other than ferry.

No special ceremony will mark today’s anniversary. As Mary Kay Forsyth, executive vice president of the Coronado Chamber of Commerce, put it: “A lot of factions here still deeply resent the bridge. Some drive to San Diego by way of Imperial Beach, just to avoid taking it.”

Admirals Were Reassured

Forsyth, who has lived in Coronado for 40 years, said opposition to the bridge crumbled when the Navy gave in.

“For years the Navy was afraid of war, afraid that a bridge would bottle up the entire fleet in the South Bay,” she said. “When the admirals were finally assured that a bridge could be built high enough to prevent that from happening, they said OK.”

Records show that the state considered a two-lane truss bridge in the early part of the century, an idea the Navy scuttled. In 1929, the San Francisco Bridge & Tunnel Co. launched a proposal to build a bridge and commissioned a feasibility study--but the stock market crash killed that idea.

In 1935, the Coronado City Council proposed building a four-lane bridge with 6-foot walkways on either side. Again, the Navy reared its head, saying, in the words of one official, “Collapsed bridges sink ships.” More measures came and went before pro-bridge forces proved unbeatable.

Gov. Brown dubbed the bridge “my baby,” a catch phrase he said he invoked “to anger the editors of the San Diego Union. They were always so mean to me. And they never wanted the bridge.”

Brown said the bridge got built only because he and the three other members of the Toll Bridge Authority decided they would build it. Once bonds were sold, it was, in Brown’s words, “a done deal.”

Now a Los Angeles lawyer, Brown called the Coronado Bridge “one of the great accomplishments of my tenure as governor. I realized I could facilitate thousands of people reaching the peninsula of Coronado, one of the loveliest bodies of land in the world.

“It was and is,” he said, “a provincial place. A lot of retired Navy people didn’t want (the bridge) then and will tell you they don’t want it now. The growth of the area superseded their wishes. That’s the reason I wanted it built--I could foresee the growth of California and particularly of San Diego County.”

Brown said his alliance with Alessio had “nothing to do with the bridge being built. He was and is a friend of mine. I wanted the bridge because it had to be built. Can you imagine Coronado now without the bridge? It’s absurd to even try.”

The bridge is 2.23 miles long. The design incorporating its 27 girders--once likened to flamingo legs joined by a strand--is orthotropic, meaning the structural support units also form the road surface, keeping weight and costs down. Because the configuration provides support in different directions, the bridge is able to support staggering loads--and to withstand ships striking the girders.

That’s happened once, said Tom Nipper, a spokesman for the California Department of Transportation.

A commercial shipping boat “knocked some of the timbers off but did no damage to the concrete pilings,” he said. “There’s never been substantial damage to the bridge. The bridge was built at a height (246 feet) where even the tallest aircraft carriers can pass underneath it. There’s no way anything can strike the top.”

The bridge was built without lights. The designers felt those would be aesthetically unappealing. A series of head-on traffic accidents changed their minds about that, and now many credit lights as the reason for its nickname, “the Jewel.”

The bridge cost $48 million and was financed through the sale of construction bonds. Work began in February, 1967, and the bridge opened 2 1/2 years later. The bill was paid off in 1986, 17 years ahead of schedule. The west-bound only toll was $1.20 until last year, when it was reduced to $1. Officials for Caltrans, which owns and operates the bridge, say they don’t know when, or if, the toll will be curtailed.

One of the lingering controversies surrounding the bridge is its lack of a thoroughfare for bicyclists and pedestrians.

“The bridge is a state highway,” California 75, Nipper noted. “It’s too dangerous for bicyclists and pedestrians.”

Brown said his only regret about the bridge is that it ignores bicyclists and walkers.

“That was a mistake,” he said. “One of the sweetest sights in the world is the hundreds of walkers and bicyclists who use the Golden Gate Bridge. I wish something could be done. . . . That would make the bridge just about perfect.”

Donald P. Murphy, 63, who was born in Coronado and moved back in 1968 after 25 years in the Army, said scores of retirees resent the bridge, and thought they had given up conflict when the wars were over. Now, he says, they’re locked in another battle--developers versus residents, cars versus people.

“I’m like a prisoner in my own home,” said Murphy, who lives three blocks from the bridge at 4th and C streets, which, depending on the time, can become gridlocked.

Murphy said traffic in Coronado is almost intolerable. In a few years, he said, the town will be reduced to “ total chaos, and then the Navy will have to do something, because none of its personnel will be able to reach North Island due to the volume of traffic coming off the bridge. Until that happens, we’ll all have to suffer.”

Jim Larson, a Caltrans spokesman, said 50,000 cars a day cross the bridge and half that many enter through Imperial Beach the Silver Strand. The city of Coronado claims a population of 23,603. Officials at North Island say they employ between 8,000 and 9,000 civilians and 4,200 Navy personnel. Tourism is a no-holds-barred industry. The bridge recorded a 6.3% increase in traffic last year alone.

Toll bridge Lt. R. D. Thomas said the bridge averaged 15,000 cars a day when it opened. The total number of vehicles crossing the bridge in all of 1970 was 7.8 million, he said, but the annual number now is close to 25 million.

Increases Every Year

He said the bridge is likely to record a peak of 72,000 cars a day this summer (it saw 69,000 on Monday alone), and about 55,000 a day on weekends.

Toll bridge Capt. Dennis Poirier said the bridge has averaged a 6% to 10% increase in traffic every year since it opened. Part of the revenue collected at the toll booth is used to commission studies on Coronado’s traffic, he said, and the rest is allocated for maintenance and road repairs.

“I’d say it’s a bad problem,” Poirier said.

Former Mayor R. H. Dorman favored a tunnel that would transport cars from the toll plaza to a gateway near the naval base. It was defeated, and Dorman’s fortunes sank with it.

Mayor Mary Herron, who ousted Dorman in last year’s election, said the tunnel would have cost more than $100 million; a road around the perimeter of Coronado, which some favor, would cost three times that amount. She has proposed what she calls “the $28-million solution” to the traffic imbroglio.

Herron’s plan is being evaluated by the California Transportation Commission, which hopes to reach a decision on it by next month. Herron predicts that a sophisticated system of new bus lines and signal lights will alleviate the crunch, but some people are skeptical.

“The buses we have now operate at less than 20% capacity,” said resident Murphy. “I’d say the best idea is to move.”

The bridge is not without grisly traffic accidents or suicides. Mary Ann Tamburello, clerical supervisor for the San Diego County coroner, said 145 people have killed themselves by leaping from the bridge. Most were men in their early 20s.

Three signs in each direction now offer would-be victims the phone number of a suicide hot line. Two signs are near the center of the bridge, where the span reaches its greatest height from the water.

Phillip Needham, 51, works as a tow truck driver for Caltrans. He said he has tried to stop 48 people from jumping and credits himself, like a proud relief pitcher, with 25 “saves.”

“They’re up there, they’re confused, somebody doesn’t love ‘em or they’ve just given up,” he said. “What do I say? Each one is different. Sometimes I’m nice. Sometimes I’m firm. I try to snap them out of their mood, whatever that is. And when I don’t succeed . . . it’s just a horrible thing to witness.”

Four peregrine falcons have, at various times, nested under the bridge, above Salvador Torres’ murals in Chicano Park. Jim Larson of Caltrans believes the birds picked the bridge because it’s isolated, and they can feed on the pigeons beneath its arches.

Peregrine falcons are an endangered species. For a long time after the bridge was built, Torres said the neighborhood nearby was endangered, too. Like the falcons, it learned to adapt.

The communities most affected by the bridge--Coronado and Barrio Logan--are alarmingly different, a graphic illustration of America as a land of haves and have-nots. The burden each shares is having been irrevocably altered by the bridge.

A cluster of chichi shops greets visitors off the new passenger ferry, which first docked in Coronado in 1987. Peohe’s, the restaurant nearest the landing, offers lobster for $34.95. Just a few miles away in the barrio, Cuatro Milpas sells five rolled tacos for $2.25.

Some of the streets in the barrio are dark and mean, and a few people have spent years trying to undo the damage inflicted by the bridge and Interstate 5, which cut a swath through the neighborhood a few years before.

Rachael Ortiz, executive director of Barrio Station, a social-service agency, said the worst aspect of the bridge was the neighborhood being converted to “mixed use and seedy light industry,” not to mention the havoc wreaked on homes and families.

Split the Community

After the bridge was built, “dozens of these creepy businesses moved in,” she said. “There were shipbuilding shops, welders, sandblasters. . . . The employees, and there were hundreds of ‘em, parked wherever they could, even if it meant your front yard. Children were crossing streets in front of giant trucks, and right over our heads was this great big bridge, casting its shadow.

“In the beginning, it split the community, and we were enraged. The area was raped by anyone wanting to make money. Overnight, we became their whores--the junkyard empire of San Diego. But now, slowly, it’s changing. We’ve targeted 23 junkyards, and, except for one, all have adopted enclosure requirements.

“Nobody cared about building a bridge over us--in the beginning, we didn’t matter--but we made them care. The lesson is, one person’s treasure can be another’s demise.”

Community activist Al Ducheny said the opening of the freeway severed the barrio from Logan Heights, and the bridge bisected the barrio, “completing the devastation.” The neighborhood’s takeover of what became Chicano Park and the murals that followed “turned a bad thing into a good thing,” he said.

Now the survivors in Barrio Logan speak of their concrete ceiling in tones far more loving than those muttered in Coronado. Torres, the artist, is one of those who views the bridge with a feeling approaching reverence.

“When I look into the depth of the columns, as the arches flow toward the waterfront, I hear a sound, a mystical sound, like that of a living creature,” he said. “To me, the bridge is life--reassurance, reaffirmation . . . love. I know what the birds must feel when they fly over. They feel pride , in a fortress of beauty and strength.”

THURSDAY: A look at San Diego County’s other toll bridge.