Golden Gate Bridge is a steel suspension bridge wi...

Golden Gate Bridge is a steel suspension bridge with Art Deco styling in California spanning Golden Gate, a 1.6-kilometre-wide straight connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. Opened in 1937, the 1,970-metre, 6-lane bridge links San Francisco to Marin County as part of the National Highway System. Construction of the orange-coloured bridge started in 1933 and took just over four years to complete at a cost of $35 million and the lives of 11 men. McClintic-Marshall Construction Company, a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel, carried out the project with Irving Marrow serving as architect and Joseph Strauss and Charles Ellis serving as design engineers. Golden Gate Bridge is 227 metres high and 90 metres wide. Its longest span is 1,280 metres. Clearance below the bridge is 67 metres at high tide. Clearance above the bridge is 4.3 metres. The weight of the roadway is supported by 250 pairs of vertical suspender ropes attached to two main cables. The main cables pass over the bridge s towers and are fixed in concrete at each end. Each of the main cables consists of 27,572 strands of wire. The total length of galvanized steel wire used to fabricate the main cables is estimated to be 130,000 kilometres. Each of the two towers has about 600,000 rivets. Golden Gate Bridge is both a California Historical Landmark (1987) and a San Francisco Designated Landmark (1999). Approximately 110,000 vehicles use the bridge each day. Southbound vehicles (two-axel) pay $8.00 ($7.00 with FasTrack) to cross the strait.