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One of the seven wonders of the modern world, the Golden Gate Bridge was the life mission of an engineer who had never designed or overseen the building of a suspension bridge. For six years Joseph Strauss, a bridge builder from Chicago, had been visiting San Francisco to supervise work on a small drawbridge, one of four hundred he had built around the world. But Strauss's ambitions far surpassed any work his firm had ever attempted.
With "Golden Gate Bridge," AMERICAN EXPERIENCE documents the construction of what was then the longest suspension bridge in the world, built hundreds of feet above the dangerously churning waters of the entrance to San Francisco Bay, the Golden Gate.
For more on the program, visit the AMERICAN EXPERIENCE companion Web site at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/goldengate/.
Local Resources
The local New Jersey firm of Roebling & Sons, whose founder John and his eldest son Washington became world famous as the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge, were hired to supply the main suspension cables for the Golden Gate Bridge. Learn about the bridges, large and small, found in the tri-state area at the following Web sites:
The Crossings of Metro New York
http://www.nycroads.com/crossings/
PBS Kids: Learning Adventures in Citizenship: The Brooklyn Bridge
http://www.pbs.org/newyork/laic/episode3/topic1/e3_topic1.html
Brooklyn Bridge Park
http://www.bbpdc.org/index.html
A Walk Around Brooklyn: A Look Around
http://www.thirteen.org/brooklyn/QTVR.html
The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey: George Washington Bridge
http://www.panynj.gov/tbt/GWB_about.htm
New York State Covered Bridge Society
http://www.nycoveredbridges.org/
City of Bayonne: The Bayonne Bridge
http://www.bayonnenj.org/bridge.htm
Connecticut's Historic Highway Bridges
http://www.past-inc.org/historic-bridges/Mainpage.html
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