The Golden Gate Bridge is the most famous and prominent structures of the city of San Francisco. Almost every tourist who comes to California's San Francisco Bay Area visits this deep red-orange colored magnificent suspension bridge completed in 1937. It was the longest suspension bridge span in the world at that time and connects San Francisco to the Marin County. You will find it's picture printed in almost all the souvenirs and tourist brochures of San Francisco. The Golden gate bridge has also been called one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

The observation areas and parking lots are located on both the north (Marin County side) and the south side ( San Francisco) of the bridge, although parking is relatively easier on the Marin County side. It also forms the part of the US 101 highway (and CA State Route 1) with about 100,000 vehicles passing though it every day. There is a toll of 5 dollars when driving south into San Francisco. The bridge is painted once every few years but some touchup is done continuously. The speed limit on the Golden Gate Bridge is 45 miles per hour and it consists of six lanes with side/walk ways on both sides.

The dimensions of the bridge defied all imagination. The total length of the bridge is 8,981ft or 2,737m. The main span between the two enormous towers is 4,200 ft or 1,280 meter long, making the Golden Gate Bridge the world's largest suspension bridge,
Golden Gate Bridge seen from Baker Beach
View from Baker Beach
a record that would stand until 1964 when the Verrazano-Narrows bridge in New York was completed.

The two beautiful Art Deco towers are almost 820ft or 250 meter tall, of which more than 20 meter is below the sea level. The road, six lanes and 90 ft / 27m wide is an amazing 220 ft or 67 meter above the water level. It is supported by enormous cables, anchored in hundreds of bars locked into concrete blocks with a pulling power of 25 million kg. The two cables have a total length of 2,332 meter and a diameter of 90 cm. They are woven from 27,572 threads of steel with a total length that equals three times the earth's circumference.

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The weight of the roadway is hung from two cables that pass through the two main towers and are fixed in concrete at each end. Each cable is made of 27,572 strands of wire. There are 80,000 miles (129,000 km) of wire in the main cables.[26] The bridge has approximately 1,200,000 total rivets.