The Magnificent Golden Gate Bridge

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human Welcome to Stuff You Should Know A production of iHeartRadio

0:15Hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging with us too And it's Stuff You Should Know And we are headed west And uh Yeah, that's all Uh, yeah, I mean we're recording on the Golden Gate Bridge I guess this is like two weeks. Wow, two weeks to the day, I think. What? From our live show in the city of San Francisco. That's true, because it's the 15th and our show's on the 29th. That's right, on a rare Thursday. Oh, a show? Yeah, yeah. Oh, by the way, too, I meant to mention, and I hope this is okay with you, I got booked to do a show on Friday. Mm-hmm. And I haven't mentioned that to people, but on Friday, I will be performing in the Hanging with Dr.

1:03Z show. Do you know that one? Like Dr. Zayas? Yeah. Do you know about this? No, no, no. I don't know anything about that one. This is the one in which comedian Dana Gould is, he owns a professional, like, full-blown Dr. Zayas costume. And he's been doing this for years, and it's like a talk show with him as the host is Dr. Zayas. So I'm on that. And I'm very excited because not only is Janet Varney in it, co-founder of Sketchfest and dear friend, but Dave Foley. I get to be on stage with a kid in the hall. What? Man, that's going to be amazing. Yeah, and the great Andy Daly. So if anyone wants to see that on Friday night, just go to the Sketchfest website and check it out.

1:45I think it's at kind of one of the small comedy clubs. Oh, okay. So it's at a comedy club? Yeah, it's one where I did Movie Crush one year. I can't remember the name of it, though. Well, do you remember how to find your way back there, though? Boy, I hope so. I hope so, too. That's awesome, man. Congrats. And, yes, I second that. Everybody should go see it, whether you're in San Francisco or not, because I'm sure that's going to be awesome. Yeah. I mean, you can come. I imagine you'll be on a plane home, huh? Yeah. Yeah. All right. But thank you. I appreciate the invite. I'll be there in spirit supporting you.

2:15You text me immediately after and be like, it was a triumph. Or. No, it won't be anything but a triumph. All right, so Golden Gate Bridge? Yeah. That's why we started talking about California and San Francisco in the first place, because if you don't bother to look at the titles of episodes and you just let it roll one end to the other, that's what we're talking about in this episode, the Golden Gate Bridge. There's a pretty good chance you know what we're talking about. It's often named as the most photographed bridge in the world. I can believe that. Yeah, this is my second favorite. What's your first?

2:50Brooklyn Bridge, man. Okay. It's got to be the BB. Okay. All right. All right. What about you? I don't know. I don't know that I have a favorite bridge. I kind of like the ones that look like sailboats. There's a few of those around. Yeah. Those are nice. A tower bridge in London is also quite magnificent. Sure. And then I'm going to sound so obnoxious, but in Budapest. It's not obnoxious. No, just being like, what's your favorite bridge? Oh, mine's in Budapest. Oh, no. But they have, I think, seven different bridges. And they did seven different designs for all the bridges that go through the city and connect Buda to Pest.

3:30Right? And it really is like a city of amazing bridges. They're all just really well done, and they're just different. It's cool. I agree. I forgot about that. Well, also, I mean, since we're shouting out bridges, we can't not talk about Pittsburgh, because I went to a baseball game there in that beautiful stadium. And you get those beautiful bridges there. It's lovely. Yeah, it's like Eight Bridges Stadium. Yeah, I think so. Is that right? Yeah. Okay, eight or 12, I think they call it Eight or 12 Bridges Stadium. The Duhs. That's right. So back to the Golden Gate. It's also, Chuck, one of the seven wonders of the modern world.

4:08I didn't know that. Yeah, and the American Society of Civil Engineers named it one of the bridges of the millennium in 2000. Wow. So it's a well-regarded bridge. And if you've always wondered or always thought like, hey, I guess the Golden Gate Bridge is called that because the, I guess the weird orange color is roughly golden. I don't know. You would be like me, probably like you, Chuck. And that would mean you were wrong. That's right. Because Golden Gate very much predates the construction of that bridge. And with that, we come to our first story. Okay. I'm going to make like a horse sound while you tell the story.

4:50So this guy will be riding a horse, okay? You got two ads of coconuts and you're banging them together. 1846, this is the Mexican-American wartime. It's going on. And there's an army officer in the United States named John Fremont who basically said without, sounds like without even asking anyone, hey, California's independent from Mexico. At one point, he was crossing the San Francisco Bay there from Sonoma. to San Francisco to fight the Mexican army there. And he named that, boy, you're really doing a great job. And he named that mile wide straight that connects the bay to the ocean. What would that be?

5:29Chrysophilae? Can't stop. Oh, no. There he goes off into the sunset. I guess Chrysophilae, which means golden gate. And later on, rather than the Greek version, he went with the English. And that passage was called the golden gate. That's right. So this is the bridge over the Golden Gate. Right. Did you know that? No, I was yesterday years old, as they say. Yeah. So, yeah. And the Golden Gate in particular is pretty neat, not just because it connects San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean, but geographically, it's like 300 feet deep right there. But on the shelf in the Pacific side, it's much shallower.

6:14And then in the bay, I saw the bay is like an average of 14 feet deep or something crazy like that. So it just suddenly goes like this huge depression. And this is what they needed to cross, like a 300-foot depression through the Golden Gate with a bridge. And I think the first person to ever suggest it was a guy named Charles Crocker. And one of the reasons they needed a bridge, Chuck, in the first place is because if you ever look at a map of San Francisco, it's actually a peninsula. So it's connected to the south, to the rest of California. But there's a lot of stuff to the north of that. To get to the north, you have to cross the Golden Gate.

6:52So people were like, we've got to get here to there. You know, we like Marin County. We like Petaluma. We like to say Petaluma, at least. Yeah, Sausalito. Sausalito is another fun one to say. So they started with ferries, and that worked just fine. But as more and more people showed up, San Francisco was a magnet for immigrants, especially after the gold rush of 1849, they were like, we might need something better than just ferries, like especially if we want to run railroad cars. Yeah. And Jack, that ferry was expensive, man. Yeah. They were actually just like tanker boats, but they would double as ferries and say, yeah, sure, we'll take you across.

7:31It was$2 a head, which is almost$70 today. Yeah. That's outrageous. Yeah. I saw$77 even. Wow, that's even more outrageous. And they gave you saltines and grape Kool-Aid. That was the only food you had on board. Just like Southern Baptist Communion. That's what I had in nursery school. It's actually a winning combination. And it was pretty good, especially if you're in church and you're hard up for snacks. So, oh, there was finally one called the Princess. It was a side wheel, paddle wheel steamer, I guess, that was the first official ferry. That happened in 1868. But that guy, Charles Crocker, all the way back in 1872, he said, we need a bridge.

8:12And the reason why he said we need a bridge is because he was a railroad guy. And he's like, we need to get railroads up there. We need to get people. We need to move lumber. We need to do all sorts of cool stuff. So let's get a bridge, guys. Yeah. And people are like, there's no way. That's two miles. No one's ever built a suspension bridge that long. And in 1916, there was a San Francisco Sun journalist who used to study engineering named James Wilkins. He said, no, I think we can build a suspension bridge. It'll be 3 ,000 feet, and it'll cost in those days' dollars$100 million, which is almost, I'm sorry, it's more than$3 billion today.

8:53So everyone said, that's probably not going to happen either. So eventually it took a city engineer named Michael O'Shaughnessy to be on the lookout to say, we do need a bridge, but we got to get this cost lower. And enlisted a guy in 1921 from Chicago named an engineer named Joseph Strauss, who said, here's what we do, everyone. It is possible, but it can't be a straight suspension bridge all the way over. And it can't be just a cantilevered bridge. The suspension will be too flexible and flexy with those winds. and the cantilever would be way too heavy. So if we do a combination of the two, I think that's the winning idea and it'll cost you only$17 million.

9:36Yeah, that was much more in line with what the city engineer knew that the city of San Francisco would be willing to pay for something like this, right? Yeah. Joseph Strauss, he became the central figure of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's often credited as the man who built the Golden Gate Bridge. That's a genuinely unfair thing to say because so many people contributed so much to it. But he was not a shy person. He could work with just about anybody. He knew how to work the system, and he was not a self-promoter, but he definitely was after the acclaim of being the man who built the Golden Gate Bridge.

10:14So just kind of put that in your pipe for later. Right. Don't smoke it yet, though, right? No, no. Don't spark it. But he enlisted a guy named Charles Ellis, who is like the, I don't know how you would describe him. I can't think of an analogous movie character, but I feel like we can get him across a little bit. He was obsessed with making sure that this bridge was not going to collapse. Yeah, I would describe him as a math whiz. He was the guy, I think we did the, when we did the New York Subways episode, we talked about the tunnels that went under the Hudson River. He was the guy that came up with that plan.

10:53And so that's a pretty good dude to get if you're trying to build a bridge that no one thought could be built at the time. Right. Like super, super math guy. Just keep math in your head because as we'll see, math would end up being his undoing. Yeah, but he was not after a claim. He did not, I get the impression, necessarily know how to work with everybody or work the system. He just wanted to do his math stuff, right? Yeah. So he was a good guy to have in that sense. And one of the reasons why he was so good is because the design process was so long. At one point, as we'll see, they just completely scrapped Strauss's idea and started over.

11:31Financing was also a thing. I mean, Strauss had gotten it down to an estimate of$17 million. And I'm sure anybody who was paying any attention was like, we should plan on probably at least double that. Just about right. Yeah. But the state was interested enough that in 1923, they passed the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District Act of California, which basically said to the people in the surrounding 21 counties, hey, you guys want to get in on this and basically vote for a tax district that can create debt to borrow money basically against our counties? What do you think? Yeah. And they said, well, what does that mean?

12:08That sounds weird. And they said, well, it means that all the businesses and all your homes in your county are going to be put up as collateral jointly against that loan. And surprisingly, maybe six out of the 21 counties said, we're in. We see this progress as something that we need. As far as the remaining counties that weren't into it, you know, some of the obvious reasons is they just didn't want to do that, A. Some worried about the cost overruns and like, hey, this isn't even going to be enough. Other people didn't, you know, this was the early 1920s. So it was still, you know, kind of a, I mean, it was a bustling city for 1920s.

12:45But there were areas of rural, you know, ruralness. Sure. Across the other side. And like they were like, we don't want this bridge. Like we've got livestock over here and we're cutting down our lumber. And even back then they had conservationists agitating against stuff like this. Notably, the Sierra Club was like, we don't want a bridge in that beautiful bay. And there were a lot of other people that came out with a lot of good reasons to bring up lawsuits like, you know, earthquakes. There was one in 1906 that was recent enough to where, like, what about this earthquake thing? Like, what if that happens?

13:26Yeah, the first big one. Yeah. Shippers were like, well, you know, we can make it through the Golden Gate to the Pacific pretty easy right now. We're a little worried that just building this bridge is going to hamper our ability to make mad cash. The Department of War, which had a heavy presence in that area, was like, look, we run like really important warships in and out of this harbor. We're worried that this bridge is going to block our progress. But then also we're worried that it's going to become a real target for saboteurs and that they will blow up the bridge and block the harbor with the debris.

14:02And then the Southern Pacific Railroad stepped up and said, we run the ferries. Like, we're going to lose a bunch of money if you guys build a bridge. So all these people together were either parties to or had their own lawsuits against the bridge authority saying like, no, you can't you can't do this. And against all of those odds, the people in favor of the bridge managed to overcome that. Yeah. And before we break, I do want to mention before we get some email, we mentioned Department of War not in bended knee to Pete Hegseth. That was the original name that later became the Department of Defense.

14:37Oh, yeah. I forgot. That's what it's called again now? Yeah, is now to the tune of what I just read was going to cost$125 million to change that name back to the Department of War. And another$125 to change it back to the Defense Department again eventually. Probably so. So I just want to point that out. Let's take a break and we'll be right back.

15:20so the first design this hybrid design was pretty ugly uh there was a critic that said it looked like an upside down rat trap so they said all right we got to redesign this thing because it's got to look good uh ellis gets together with consulting engineers leon i guess that would be Moisif and O.H. Amman. And they got together with Strauss and they said, all right, let's go back to this old idea, but a new design of a full suspension bridge. Yeah. The longest one ever. And it'll end up being the tallest one ever at the time, at least, because, you know, all the winds and the water and the boats and everything, this thing needed to be tall and super long.

16:00Yeah. And it also needed to be tall because the angle of the cables to hold up such a long deck had to come down at a crazy angle, which meant that those towers had to be really tall. So this is going to be the tallest bridge in the world, the longest suspension bridge in the world, and they're like, let's do that. Let's make the impossible happen. And it's worth pointing out, Chuck, like these guys aren't using CAD. They're not using any sort of computer. They do not exist yet. They're not using calculators. They're doing all of these calculations by hand using their noodles. Slide rules. Slide rules, pencils.

16:35Like, that's how this bridge was designed. That's how they calculated the stresses on it. That's how they figured out how to engineer it all by hand and using their heads. Yeah, amazing. They did all kinds of testing, obviously. Some pretty impressive stuff, as you'll see. They created a model that was 156 scale, took it to Princeton University there in New Jersey, and did a scaled-down equivalent of 120 million pounds of vertical load to test to make sure those towers could take that, passed that test. And like I said, there was so much math going on, eventually Strauss got irritated. So the guy, Ellis, that they hired because he was great at math, got fired because the math was so irritating to Strauss.

17:23Yeah, Ellis later recorded that Strauss said that the structure was nothing unusual and didn't require the time that Ellis thought necessary for it. Oh, man. I also saw elsewhere somebody say that Strauss was envious of or resentful of, I guess, the respect that Ellis got from the board whenever he went and spoke to them. I could see that. So, yeah, this is, and I also think that Strauss was getting leaned on. He was the one that was getting pressured to meet the time. And Ellis was like, no, it's going to take six months more than that. So finally, Strauss fires Ellis in the most cowardly way a person can.

17:59He forces him to take vacation. And then before his vacation's over, he sends him a telegram saying, you're fired. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Ellis didn't receive a lot of credit at the time. And in fact, he didn't get a lot of credit until after he passed away in 1949. So we're taking our hat off to you, Mr. Ellis, for your great work and your great math, because we are both math whizzes ourselves, and we have a lot of respect for maths. That's right. He also, he didn't have anything to do. He couldn't really find much work because this was during the Depression and he was fired. He went back and he went over all the figures again, all of the calculations to make sure they were right.

18:40He was spending like 70 hours a week, and it took him months. Jeez. And he did. And he was like, yep, this is going to work, even though no one was listening to him. He wasn't being paid for it. He just wanted to make sure that this thing was going to work. That's great. So in 1928, they kind of mired their way through or got their way through the mire of the legal activity and all the protests and everything. The state government of California said the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District is now a thing. They're going to pull off every facet of this bill. And in November 1930, the district issued$35 million in bonds to finance this thing, which was a problem at the time, though, because it was during the Great Depression, obviously.

19:22And they couldn't find any buyers for these bonds. And all these legal matters were scaring people away. And so they turned to kind of one of the heroes of this whole thing. In 1932, a guy named Amadio Giannini, the president of Bank of America. Yeah, one of the most revered and respected banks in the world. Everyone loves Bank of America. They're basically a mascot here in the U.S. That's right. And he was also just a California hero. He kind of kick-started the Hollywood movie industry, the California wine industry. So he was a guy to go to, and he was like, I got you. I got a big room with$6 million over here, and I'll buy those bonds, and you can get started on your project.

20:06Yeah, which is pretty cool. And he is one of the heroes for sure. So they got started. They started during the Depression, as we saw. And on the one hand, that meant financing. It was difficult. On the other hand, it meant that they had a huge pool of laborers to tap because there were a lot of out-of-work people. So they got everyone they needed basically immediately to get started. It started on January 5th, 1933. And there were a lot of issues that construction faced that made this a unique construction job. Every day, four times a day, so two times in and two times out, the tide brings in and takes out 390 billion gallons of water through the Golden Gate.

20:50While these guys are trying to build their bridge, there's tons of fog. There's a lot of storms. There's high winds. It was not just like a walk in the park like apparently the Bay Bridge was to build. Yeah, I mean, apparently the Bay Bridge is more impressive in some ways and was built and finished before, but it didn't get nearly the press because it was just an easier job overall. Right. It's like eight miles long, which is the exact distance from downtown Detroit to Eminem's house. Oh, man, I didn't see that coming. When you said Detroit, I didn't even see it coming. Nice work. Thanks. All right, so it's a difficult job, super, super hard because of the terrain and the water and the wind and the fog and everything going on.

21:35The North Tower was built on the Marin County side on the coastline there into a very strong layer of basalt and sandstone. And that's great. So they were like, the North Side is fine because this stuff is very, very sturdy to build into. The South Tower was about 1 ,000 feet offshore and a bed of serpentine rock. And they went, this side is a little trickier, so we're going to have to take our time a little more. Yeah. They got this guy named Andrew C. Lawson. He's a great example of how many people were thoroughly involved in this. Because every person you mention in this story, just imagine there's dozens or maybe hundreds of people working beneath them in coordination with that person.

22:16He was a geologist, and he basically took to test the bedrock. Like he, I'm not exactly sure how he did it, but he put the equivalent of a railroad boxcar, fully loaded that amount of weight and force onto a 20 square inch area. And it held up fine. That's incredible. It is. I could not find out how he did that exactly. It's just such a spectacular way to put it that I guess everyone's like, no one cares what actually happened. Yeah. Just tell him he did it. Right. And then he put on an old-timey diving suit and diving bell and went down to the bedrock and hit it with a hammer. And apparently if it makes this sound like a dinging sound, that's what you're looking for because not only is it strong, but it's also flexible, which is going to come in handy whenever the San Andreas gives California the big one, the 8.6 magnitude earthquake that everyone says is inevitably coming someday.

23:15Yeah, for sure. In order to ensure that, you know, stability, they had workers dive 90 feet down to put explosives down to blast out even more rock so they could go even deeper. They had to get rid of those fragments to even get out to that tower. You know, they have all these materials. So a lot of big construction like this is constructing things so you can do the construction. And that was the case here. So they had to build a road basically on a trestle just to get out to that tower. And then they had to protect this thing from like being bumped into by a ship. Yeah. If you look at the concrete foundations that the towers are built on, you'll notice that they're like oval.

24:00And those were designed to basically act as fenders, kind of like if you play bumper bowling. OK. It's basically like that. And imagine the bowling ball is a ship that's being captained by somebody who's not paying attention, probably on his phone. Yeah, yeah. And they will hit that fender, the bumper, and it will keep them from running into the actual tower itself. And because of the oval shape, hopefully kind of push the ship away from the fender itself. Yeah. Well, the captain says, what was that? Right. Yeah, they weren't, I think they said it looked like a giant bathtub is what they referred to it.

24:41But, you know, they filled that thing once it was peeking above the surface, partially with concrete, pumped out the water, reinforced it with steel, more concrete, and all of a sudden you've got a protected tower with that billiards bumper bowl. Bumper bowl? Mm-hmm. Is that what you called it? Bumper bowling. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about like bumper billiards. No, no, no. Bumper bowling where they put those guardrails down in the gutters. Yeah, we went bowling last week and Ruby still uses those. I do too sometimes. I can still manage to miss pins bumper bowling. Oh, okay. I thought you meant just roll a gutter ball.

25:21It's like, man, who can't? No, I'm saying even bumper bowling, I can miss the pins still. I did the usual. I know I mentioned this before, but with bowling, usually for, And I think the other day I hit like a 140 and then like a 70. I don't remember. Are those good? I mean, 140 for someone who doesn't bowl much, I feel like, is a pretty strong number. Is that dude or Jesus level good? Oh, no, no, no. Like 300 is a perfect game. But, I mean, 140 means you've hit plenty of strikes and spares and probably had a good last frame out. I don't know if that's what they call it. But 70 is bad. My whole point was, though, is I'm good for one game, and then my game really drops off.

26:02Okay. Well, were you drunk by the second game? No, no, no, no, no. I had but one beer, a PBR draft. It was delicious. Oh, okay. Yeah, sometimes those are the best ones, the really cruddy ones. I don't do that much anymore, but it was super refreshing and delicious. Great. Yeah. That's Chuck Guss-Voling. Yeah, and PBR. Uh-huh. So you want to take a break? Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're there already. Let's do it. Okay.