Bridge Facts

Before the Bridge | During Construction | After Construction

In August 1933, a Portland-bound ship, the Sidney M. Hauptman, veered off course in a dense fog and crashed into a construction trestle, setting back the project by about a month.

"Hello -- Phone Service to Davy Jones' Locker," read a December 1934 headline in the San Francisco News. The accompanying photo showed bridge builders 107 feet down in an inspection well, calling to the surface to make their report.

Worker Albert "Frenchy" Gales was atop the unfinished south tower at the time of a June 1935 earthquake. He remembered, "the tower swayed 16 feet each way. There were 12 or 13 guys on top with no way to get down... The whole thing would sway toward the ocean, guys would say, 'here we go!' Then it would sway back toward the bay."

Days after a tragic accident that killed ten workers, searchers recovered the giant safety net that had also fallen from the bridge. Tides had carried it a mile out into the Pacific Ocean, and 500 feet beneath the surface. They found tangled in it the body of one of the victims, a carpenter named Arthur Anderson.