American History Tellers - America's Monuments | The Longest Bridge | 4

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

In the early 1920s, San Francisco was a picturesque city on a narrow, isolated peninsula. Known for its scenic, natural beauty, it had the potential to become one of America’s leading metropolises. But to fuel its economic growth, it needed a bridge -- across one of the most treacherous bodies of water on the Western seaboard.To build a bridge across the strait known as the Golden Gate, engineers and construction crews would have to fight against blistering winds, vicious currents, and punishing weather. Workers would dive below the frigid water, and ascend to breathtaking heights. In the end, they would forge an engineering marvel at the western entrance to America – and capture the spirit of an iconic city. Listen to new episodes 1 week early and to all episodes ad free with Wondery+. Join Wondery+ for exclusives, binges, early access, and ad free listening. Available in the Wondery App https://wondery.app.link/historytellers.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's 1921. You're a city engineer in San Francisco. But ever since you moved to Sausalito across the bay, you have to take the ferry into work. It's the only way to get into the city. This morning, you disembark from the crowded ferry and make your way on foot up the hill from the port.

Behind you, dozens of automobiles stream out of the parking lot. As you approach your streetcar stop, you notice a familiar figure standing on the edge of the slope, looking out at the water behind you. It's Michael O'Shaughnessy, and like you, he's a civil engineer for City Hall. Hey Mike, what are you doing here? Shouldn't you be at the office? Well, in a way, I'm in the office right now. He happily shows you the sheets of paper he's holding in his hands. The cover page reads Bridging the Golden Gate. That's a nifty title. I take it this is your pitch? Yeah, we've got this brochure and a design. Of course, now all we have to do is get it approved. This Strauss fellow is helping us drum up support for it. You

know him? The fellow who does the drawbridges? Yeah, I know him. Well, he's quite the salesman. Between his mouth and our engineering, I think this city might soon have itself a bridge across the Golden Gate. You glance down at Mike's brochure, and then up, across the Golden Gate Strait, through the dense fog billowing in the wind.

But to you, the idea of building a bridge there seems impossible. On either side, steep cliffs drop off into the choppy headwaters of San Francisco Bay. The ones on the far side are barely visible through the fog. Gosh, really? That's gotta be, what, a mile and a half across? Mike nods. That's longer than any bridge in existence. How are you gonna get caissons in that water? How deep will we have to go? Yeah, about a hundred feet, maybe more. Of course, I'm not going to do it myself. It's going to take a team. A team of crazy people.

Now Mike's grinning from ear to ear. Yeah, maybe. But since when has anyone in this city been distinguished by their sanity? Yeah, well, that's a fair point. But you really think it can be done? I do. I do. And I think we're going to do it. That water is freezing. The current alone is deadly. And you know how high the winds get.

As if on cue, a strong gust blows the brochure pages right out of your hands. They catch and flutter in the wind, swooping away until they're out of sight. Oh, I'm so sorry about that. You have more, right? But Mike surprises you by laughing. No, I'm going to take that as a sign. The Golden Gate wants to take a closer look at the plans. I just hope it's not a bad omen. Nonsense.

We have more than one copy, believe me. Come on, I'll drive you into town. As you climb inside Mike's car, you take one last look over your shoulder. The fog is still there, dancing on the choppy waters of the strait. If Mother Nature ever designed a less likely spot for a bridge, you've never seen it. But Mike is right about one thing. San Francisco has a long history as a home of dreamers, mavericks, and more than a few lunatics.

It began as a gold rush town, and its early architects and civil engineers built a thriving metropolis out of eccentrically steep streets. When a devastating earthquake leveled four-fifths of the city just 15 years ago, people rebuilt in record time. San Franciscans are a crazy, determined bunch, and that's the attitude it'll take to get this bridge built. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America

has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with. Listen to The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. First, Gwyneth Paltrow. Anthony Anderson. Tabitha Brown. Tony Hawk. Oh, my God. Buy it now. Stream free on Freeview and Prime Video.

From Wondery, I'm Lindsey Graham, and this is American History Tellers. Our history, isolated peninsula. It was known for its scenic, natural beauty, and a busy port. And with a busy port, it had the potential to become one of America's leading metropolises. But a slow, out-of-date ferry system hampered its economic growth. Bridges could change all that. And within the next two decades, designers and engineers would attempt to connect the city to the mainland via the north and east. One bridge, cutting across the San Francisco Bay to Oakland, would be plain and utilitarian, a workhorse. The other, spanning

the mile-and-a-half-wide mouth of the bay, would be less trafficked but more majestic, a symbol of the city's style and panache. But it would also prove to be the far greater engineering challenge. To build a bridge across the strait known as the Golden Gate, engineers and construction crews would have to fight against blistering winds, vicious currents, and punishing weather. Workers would dive below the frigid water and ascend to breathtaking heights. Meanwhile, the man behind the bridge's creation would clash with his own designers, threatening to derail the project's completion.

In the end, they would forge an engineering marvel at the western entrance to America and capture the spirit of an iconic city. This is Episode 4 of American Monuments, The Longest Bridge. In 1916, a journalist and former engineering student named James Wilkins wrote a series of editorials in a San Francisco newspaper called The Bulletin. In these editorials, Wilkins proposed a bridge across the Golden Gate, the channel at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. If a bridge could be built there, it would have to be longer than any that had been built before, over a mile and a half to connect the city of San Francisco with a rural suburb of Marin County to the north. Wilkins cast the project in epic terms, writing,

Even in the earliest times, the ancients understood the need to dignify their harbors with impressive works, the Colossus of Rhodes, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, but a bridge across the Golden Gate would dwarf and overshadow them all. Even while writing, Wilkins was unsure whether anyone could really build the bridge. But that question became part of the appeal. For Wilkins, the call for a Golden Gate Bridge was more about symbolism than practicality. It was about building a monumental work of art to crown the city's harbor, something that could rival the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and mark San Francisco Bay with an image impossible to forget. Wilkins' editorials caught the eye of city engineer Michael

O'Shaughnessy. He was in the process of rebuilding the infrastructure of San Francisco following the disastrous 1906 earthquake. For all his can-do attitude, O'Shaughnessy knew a bridge across the Golden Gate Strait would be difficult. The distance from shore to shore demanded that the bridge's foundations be sunk into some of the most treacherous waters on the west coast. The powerful tidal currents could send ships spinning. The fog was constant and often impenetrable, the wind blustery and unpredictable. Any bridge built there would have to withstand a constant barrage from the elements. But O'Shaughnessy was at least willing to entertain the idea. And he found a fellow believer in a Chicago-based engineer

who was in town building a bridge on 4th Street. Standing just 5 feet 3 inches tall, Joseph Strauss was a gifted architect and promoter who specialized in the construction of drawbridges. He was known to be highly exacting and highly temperamental. And with a carnival-barker-like personality, he was happiest when he had something to sell. Strauss grabbed hold of the Golden Gate Bridge idea and wouldn't let go. For him, success would be more than just a structure.

He was nearing the age of 50, and he knew such a bridge could define his legacy. By 1921, Strauss and O'Shaughnessy had produced a brochure detailing their plan for a 1.7-mile-long suspension bridge across the Golden Gate Channel. The ad copy proclaimed the bridge would represent a crowning achievement of American endeavor and constitute the greatest structure of magnitude and span ever erected. Strauss went on a speaking tour of the Bay Area, promoting his Golden Gate Bridge to homeowners, bankers, and anyone who would listen.

The tour worked. Within a year, he had gained the support of newspapers, civic groups, and most importantly, the San Francisco and Marin County's Boards of Supervisors. By 1923, this support coalesced into a political organization called the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District, which was authorized to raise taxes, issue bonds, and declare eminent domain over the land needed for the bridge's construction. It took the rest of the decade, though, to secure funding for the bridge. But in the meantime, Strauss faced another problem. His initial design lacked the imagination and style that the new bridge demanded. Sketched as a suspension bridge with a cantilever drawbridge awkwardly positioned

in the middle, Strauss's golden gate was far from beautiful. One critic described the design as an upside-down rat trap. To improve his plan, Strauss turned to a trusted member of his team. 46-year-old Charles Ellis had been a professor of structural engineering at the University of Illinois before joining Strauss's engineering firm. He'd written one of the standard textbooks of framed structure theory. And in his spare time, just for fun, he did complex math equations and translated Greek classics. While the Golden Gate Project continued to raise funds, Ellis and Strauss worked together building bridges over the Mississippi and Columbia rivers.

Each time, the loud, brash Strauss did the promoting, while the tall, lanky, soft-spoken Ellis produced the engineering designs. Drawing on the theories of ancient Greek mathematician Pythagoras, Ellis looked to classical inspirations to come up with a new, modern design for the Golden Gate Bridge. But to improve Strauss's work, Ellis would have to strike a delicate balance. The bridge needed to be both beautiful and structurally sound enough to withstand the extreme conditions of the strait. Ellis worked tirelessly to make the math and the art blend seamlessly, and it would take his singular focus to solve the puzzle of the bay. Imagine it's March 1930. You're a junior designer for the Strauss Engineering Company

on the fourth floor of the Russ Building in downtown San Francisco. Everyone else seems to have cleared out, possibly taking a second drink for lunch or enjoying the unseasonably warm day walking the streets. And you're headed to the elevator to join them when you notice something odd. The door to Charles Ellis's office is open. This hasn't been the case for nearly a week. Charles has the toughest job of anyone at the firm. It's one thing to design a bridge. It's another altogether to mathematically prove that bridge won't collapse once it's built.

The pressure is all on him. Hey, Charles. Haven't seen you in a while. How's it going in there? Well, great, great. Come on in. Take a look at this. You push the door open, curious to see what's going on. Typically, Charles is very reserved, very quiet. It's not like him to give anyone a sneak preview of his work. The bridge proposal's finished. He's standing in the middle of his small office, pointing proudly to his drafting table. Papers are stacked there and on every other available surface. I thought it wasn't due for another week.

I knew we could build a bridge. We all knew we could do it. But here's the week. I knew we could build a bridge. We all knew we could do it. But here's the proof. You turn your attention to the large pages, looking down at sketches and equations. Charles points at certain numbers in particular. See, this number here represents torsion integrity. And then here is the total length of suspension cable, accounting for the distance between the towers and the load-bearing elements. And look, by placing the south tower here, just offshore, we're not even going to have to tear down the old fort at the bottom of the Presidio.

Charles is grinning broadly as he speaks. It seems as if a great weight has been lifted from his shoulders. This is going to be the longest suspension bridge in the world. Well, it looks great, Charles. These numbers are a bit above my pay grade, but the bridge is stunning. Better than Strauss's design, that's for sure. You mean this as a joke, but Charles's brow furrows.

Well, whether we use this design is his decision, of course, and I'm sure he'll have modifications. He always does. Sure, just enough that he can take credit for the design. I do hope you stand up to him this time, Charles. You deserve the recognition. But Charles just smiles sheepishly. His excitement has already passed, and he's getting back to his usual self, agreeable, unassuming. He covers the designs with a blank sheet. Well, we'll just have to wait and see what the boss says. In the meantime, you should sheet. Well, we'll just have to wait and see what the boss says.

In the meantime, you should celebrate. Here, I'll buy you a drink. No, I'd rather not celebrate until Joseph has seen it. You go on. Have one for me, though. You're not going to twist his arm about it. Still, it was nice to see Charles looking so happy, if only for a moment. You just hope that Strauss and his massive ego won't mess with Charles' elegant design, or steal all the credit for it.

Charles Ellis not only helped give the Golden Gate Bridge its distinctive look, but made certain its construction was actually feasible. He performed the bulk of the engineering math, without the use of computers, to prove that a suspension bridge could withstand the pressures of the Golden Gate Strait. Meanwhile, Joseph Strauss turned his attention to overcoming political obstacles in the bridge's path. Just across the peninsula, the San Francisco to Oakland Bay Bridge underwent a public fundraising bonanza. But Strauss's Golden Gate project was meeting resistance, despite plenty of popular support, and money to fund the bridge wasn't coming in fast enough. And in fact, several different groups were opposed to a bridge of any kind across the Golden Gate. Bay Area military bases worried that if the bridge were attacked, the debris might block the entire

port. Sierra Club activists protested what they felt was an unnecessary intrusion on natural surroundings. And the Southern Pacific Ferry Company, fearing bridges would spell the end of their transportation monopoly, took to the courts, attempting to block any public funding of the bridge as an improper use of taxpayer money. But the need for the bridge soon became undeniable to local residents. On Labor Day weekend of 1930, more than 86,000 vehicles brought the Bay Area ferry system to a standstill. City motorists returning home from the Sausalito ferry slip faced a miles-long traffic jam.

It was clear that if San Francisco wanted to grow, that growth was tied directly to automobiles. And those automobiles needed bridges. Unsurprisingly, local car dealers and the California State Automobile Association were some of the loudest bridge boosters. Two months after the congested Labor Day weekend, Bay Area voters overwhelmingly approved a bond issue of $35 million toward construction of the Golden Gate Bridge. With the vote and a victory in federal court against the ferry companies, opposition to the bridge dwindled. It was a time for celebration at the Strauss Engineering Corporation. But within a year,

two key individuals were gone from the project. First, Michael O'Shaughnessy returned to his work at City Hall. Publicly, he disparaged the Golden Gate project as too expensive. Privately, O'Shaughnessy admitted he was sick and tired of dueling with the ego of Joseph Strauss. And then, Strauss abruptly dismissed his chief engineer, Charles Ellis. Strauss claimed Ellis was taking too long with his calculations, wasting company time and, most importantly, company money. He removed Ellis from the Golden Gate project by written letter in November of 1931. Ellis worked on bridge calculations for another month in his spare time, until Strauss fired him from the company altogether.

But Strauss still had Ellis' work, the mathematics and calculations proving the bridge's structural integrity. He didn't need Ellis, the man, any longer. Meanwhile, with the infusion of the bond money, construction could finally begin. But designers and contractors still faced a daunting task. Important design elements were still unfinished, and the day-to-day task of building the bridge brought new risks and grueling conditions. The job would take place 100 feet underwater and over 600 feet in the air. On paper, the Golden Gate Bridge was a thing of beauty. But realizing that beautiful

design would demand death-defying feats. Dracula, the ancient vampire who terrorizes Victorian London. Blood and garlic, bats and crucifixes. Even if you haven't read the book, you think you know the story. One of the incredible things about Dracula is that not only is it this wonderful snapshot of the 19th century, but it also has so much resonance today. The vampire doesn't cast a reflection in a mirror. So when we look in the mirror, the only thing we see is our own monstrous abilities. From the host and producer of American History Tellers and History Daily comes the new podcast, The Real History of

Dracula. We'll reveal how author Bram Stoker raided ancient folklore, exploited Victorian fears around sex, science and religion, and how even today we remain enthralled to his strange creatures of the night. You can binge all episodes of The Real History of Dracula exclusively with Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus and The Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts. But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom.

When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambees and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast series essential. Each month, Apple Podcast editors spotlight one series that has captivated listeners with masterful storytelling, creative excellence, and a unique creative voice and vision. To recognize Ghost Story being chosen as the first series essential, Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time,

only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself. With the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge about to commence, head engineer Joseph Strauss was now without a lead engineer. Since he had fired Charles Ellis, Strauss now turned to other talented minds drawn to work on the Golden Gate Project. The task was so formidable that it required a large collaborative team to design and engineer all the disparate aspects of the longest suspension bridge in the world. Jutting off the northwest tip of San Francisco's peninsula, the bridge would arch over an old, unused military garrison called Fort Point. Moving out into the water, the first of the two suspension towers would be built 1,000 feet off the shoreline.

Cables would be spun from the first tower to the second, 4,200 feet across the channel. The two towers and the spun cables connecting them comprised the majority of the bridge's strength and load-bearing capabilities. The height of the bridge's roadway could raise and lower by as much as 16 feet as the bridge reacted to fluctuations in temperature and tide. Spanning 1.7 miles, the bridge needed to possess both massive strength and flexibility to withstand the ever-changing weather patterns that roared daily through the San Francisco Bay. It needed to endure the possibility of gale force winds from above and earthquakes from below, and it needed to be able to bear the weight of all the automobile traffic that streamed across it. To achieve this synthesis, Strauss hired Leon Moiseff.

The 59-year-old Latvian émigré was considered one of the premier bridge engineers of his time. He helped design the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia and the Manhattan Bridge across New York's East River. The forward-thinking Moiseff championed the idea of slender steel towers with more flexibility than bulkier construction materials like stone and concrete, and his innovation allowed bridges like the Golden Gate to be built longer and more cheaply than previously thought possible. Fellow architect Irving Morrow was the man responsible for the art deco look of the Golden Gate's fluting and tower treatments. He was also instrumental in finalizing the bridge's

distinctive color. Others on the design team favored serious industrial colors like black or gray. The U.S. Navy wanted yellow and black bumblebee stripes to cover the bridge so it could be easily seen. The Air Force agreed that stripes would be great, but said red and white would be more visible from the air. Morrow ignored all these suggestions and instead looked to the hills and reddish rock above the waterline on the bridge's Marin countryside. He sought a color that complemented the earth tones and eventually settled on a reddish lead-based primer known as International Orange. As the color was being debated, the bridge itself slowly rose out of the churning waters of the Golden Gate. But before they could build above the water,

workers had to build below. Imagine it's April, 1934. You're floating 60 feet beneath the surface of the San Francisco Bay. The water temperature is a frigid 55 degrees, and the current pushes against your diving suit with a brutal force. Darkness surrounds you. Silt and mud from the bottom of the bay rushes past the visor of your helmet. You close your gloves tighter around a metal frame as it pulls you up.

It's important to surface slowly, or you'll get pressure sickness. Very gradually, you rise to 15 feet, then 10 feet, then 5. As the top of your helmet breaks the surface, the whiteness of the foggy sky fills your vision. It's a beautiful sight because air means oxygen. All right, get him up. Come on. Hold. A group of men hoist you further out of the water, swinging you over onto the pier. Your foreman pulls the levers of your helmet and lifts it off your head. You okay?

Yeah, it was a smooth ride back up. And the charges were set? Yeah, I had to clear out some debris. Things got shaken up overnight pretty good down there. Current's strong already, but the dynamite should stay where we put it. All right, fantastic. Go take a breather. One of the other workers escorts you across the pier to a bench, where you can sit and rest before your next dive.

He gestures to a large steel cylinder nearby, a decompression chamber where divers who come up too fast can go to recover from the painful condition known as the bends. I'm glad you don't need that today, right? Yeah, I'm feeling good. I think we came up nice and slow. You take a seat and close your eyes in the sun. You're shivering, but after 15 minutes at the bottom of the freezing bay, even the cold sun through the San Francisco fog feels nice and warm. Detonator set. Clear. With your eyes closed, you wait and listen for the sound.

With the wind and the waves, you almost can't hear it. It's a small, distant boom. Almost the only way to know if the dynamite charges went off at all is the bubbles forming on the surface of the water. That's one charge down, and two more to go. You take a deep breath, adjust the rubber gasket around your helmet, and mentally prepare yourself for your next trip down into the murk. Underwater divers were integral to the first phase of the Golden Gates construction. In order for the bridge's two towers to be placed in the water, concrete foundations had to be dug into the channel floor. Nothing of this size or scale had been attempted before, and so veteran

divers were called in. First, they used dynamite to blast down to the bedrock. Then they cleared the rubble with high-pressure underwater hoses. Once the beds were cleared, workers poured concrete footings, then built them up through frameworks to the surface. All told, these anchorings involved the removal of more than three million cubic feet of earth and the pouring of concrete into frameworks 12 stories high. The end result was the equivalent of building two skyscrapers in the middle of a strait of rushing water. But soon enough, by the end of 1934, two steel towers rose hundreds of feet into the sky. Once the towers were finished, the spinning of suspension cable could begin. This cable would be spun and respun from one tower to the other, tightening

and retightening until the calibration was exact. Workers climbed to dizzying heights over 500 feet above the water. Men wore overcoats or double sweaters to combat sea temperatures that could drop as much as 30 degrees. Signs of incompetence or dangerous behavior led to immediate dismissal. The Great Depression was on, and new union workers were easy to find. Some rules, however, reflected the unique nature of the job. If you were between tasks, you didn't have to try and look busy. You could stretch your arms or have a cigarette. Stress levels were so high that little breaks throughout the day were considered healthy,

part of the job's natural rhythm. Even free sauerkraut juice was provided every Monday morning for workers who might still be managing their hangovers. Joseph Strauss was keenly concerned with worker safety and productivity. He instituted a hardhat requirement, which would soon become workplace standard, and he spent over $100,000 to install safety netting at the base of the towers, and later under the roadway as it was being built. A total of 19 men fell into the netting and survived. They called themselves the Halfway to Hell Club.

A common bridge-building calculation of risk used to be one worker death per million dollars spent. The Golden Gate's bridge budget was $35 million, but by 1937, there had been only one death, not 35. The towers were built, suspension cables spun, and the roadway nearly completed. Then, on February 17th, a five-ton platform came loose from beneath the North Tower, crashing into the bay and taking the safety net with it. Four men involved in the accident managed to survive, but ten other men did not, dying from the fall or from drowning after being caught underwater in the safety net.

From his hospital bed, survivor Slim Lambert told a newspaper, Ten of my friends. I saw them all die around me, and there wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. A coroner's jury found the platform bolts to be at fault. Strauss blamed the bridge material supplier, who in turn blamed Strauss and his men for lack of supervision. No charges were filed. Eager to put the tragic deaths of ten workers behind them, San Francisco's leaders began preparing a celebration to open the Golden Gate Bridge. The date was set for May 27, 1937. This came seven months after another auspicious occasion, the opening of the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco with Oakland. Once isolated on a

peninsula, the city of San Francisco suddenly had two bridges connecting it to points north and east. Having one bridge constructed during the Great Depression would have been remarkable enough. Having two was extraordinary. Within months, the Golden Gate Bridge would be open to automobile traffic. But only then would the real structural challenge come. The bridge had appeared first as an idea, then as a sketch. It was then measured and calculated. The engineering had been checked and triple-checked.

Now the bridge would have to function perfectly. There would be no room for error. For the bridge to truly go down in history as the engineering marvel Strauss hoped it would be, it would have to pass one final test, a test that would take it right to the brink of collapse. In November 1991, media tycoon Robert Maxwell mysteriously vanished from his luxury yacht in the Canary Islands. But it wasn't just his body that would come to the surface in the days that followed.

It soon emerged that Robert's business was on the brink of collapse, and behind his facade of wealth and success was a litany of bad investments, mounting debt, and multi-million dollar fraud. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show Business Movers. We tell the true stories of business leaders who risked it all, the critical moments that define their journey, and the ideas that transform the way we live our lives. In our latest series, a young refugee fleeing the Nazis arrives in Britain determined to make something of his life. Taking the name Robert Maxwell, he builds a publishing and newspaper empire that spans the globe. But ambition eventually curdles into desperation, and Robert's determination to succeed turns into a willingness

to do anything to get ahead. Follow Business Movers wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon Music or Wondery and T-Boy. This is Nick. This is Jack. And we've covered over a thousand episodes of pop business news stories on our daily podcast. We've identified the most viral products of all time. And they're wild origin stories that you had no idea about. From the Levi's 501 jeans to Legos.

Come for the products you're obsessed with. Stay for the business insights that are going to blow up your group chat. Bye. right now by joining Wondery Plus. On its opening day, May 27th, 1937, the Golan Gate Bridge welcomed pedestrians to take the 1.7-mile-long promenade. An estimated 2,000 people showed up, some dressed in their Sunday best. Others wore roller skates or used stilts or even walked backwards in an attempt to be the very first people to do such things on the new bridge. Automobiles came across the following day. Celebrations continued with historical pageants, parades, and a fleet of more than a hundred vessels sailing underneath the bridge's flame-colored exterior. Joseph Strauss, the man who willed the Golden Gate Bridge into being,

attended the opening ceremonies. He told newspaper reporters that he never set out to build the longest bridge in the world. That record-breaking feat was just a happy accident. He modestly declared, On the contrary, I tried to make the span length as small as I possibly could. But he was still competitive even in victory. Strauss took a swipe at city engineer Michael O'Shaughnessy, who had left the project on bitter terms, saying, O'Shaughnessy told me it couldn't be done in the first place, and in the second place,

if it could be done, it would cost $130 million. In fact, the bridge had been completed on budget for a mere $35 million. With the bridge's opening, Strauss had achieved his monumental task, and his desire to establish his legacy looked secure. Within a year, he would be dead of a heart attack at the age of 68. In 1941, a statue of Strauss was commissioned to stand near the Presidio entrance to the bridge. A plaque was set nearby with the names of Strauss, Leon Moiseff, Irving Morrow, and other designers engraved upon it. The name of the bridge's original lead engineer, Charles Ellis, was nowhere to be found. By then, the bridge had undergone its first stress test.

In 1938, winds approaching 80 miles an hour had created a wave-like undulation in the bridge's surface. The winds pushed the bridge's towers and roadway off-center by as much as 10 feet. Bridge directors knew there was a very real danger of the brutal Bay Area weather causing damage to the bridge. Following the 1938 storm, engineer Russell Cohn submitted a confidential report to the directors laying out the possibility of long-term problems. The bridge directors read Cohn's report and quickly stashed it away from public eyes. Then, in 1940, a bridge just south of Seattle collapsed. Only months after its grand opening, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was caught on film swinging horrifically

back and forth in 40-mile-per-hour winds. Unable to withstand the torquing motion, the roadway of the bridge gave way, spilling into the water below. No one was killed, but a motorist narrowly escaped death by fleeing the collapsing bridge, leaving his car to fall with the roadway. Back in San Francisco, bridge directors were concerned. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, like the Golden Gate, was a modern suspension bridge, and on both bridges, Leon Moiseff was involved in the engineering calculations. Winds through the bay could reach 60 miles an hour or more, far higher than what took down the Tacoma Bridge.

It was clear that the Golden Gate was at risk. But how much risk? No one could say for sure. Until a stormy, windswept night in 1951. Imagine it's December 1st, 1951. It's around six o'clock in the evening on a Saturday. You work at the maintenance station on the Presidio side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It's the time of your shift when traffic across the bridge will increase 70 percent as weekend visitors from the suburbs begin making their way home. But tonight there's a problem. Your co-worker

David comes bursting into the station. He just drove across from the Marin side. Oh my god, it's crazy out there. My windshield wipers could barely keep up. Those wind gusts must be 60 miles an hour. Any word from downtown? No, nothing yet. This morning's weather report called for exceptionally high winds, and you had a bad feeling that they might get worse once the sun went down. Now, looking out your window at the bridge in the gathering darkness, you see something astounding. David? David, come take a look at this. Are you seeing what I'm seeing? From out the window, it appears that the sides of the bridge are shifting. Ever so slightly.

Up on one side and down on the other. Then it reverses as the other side comes up and the first side goes down. Not as bad as the newsreel footage of the Seattle Bridge. Not near as bad, but still. Yeah, hello, Bridge Operations, Presidio. How's the bridge look? It's your boss, Mr. Ricketts, the general manager of Bridge Operations. Well, sir, we're seeing some movement. That is what I can even make out through all this rain. Do you have any specific numbers? David's been studying the bridge movement with practice eye. He jots down a number on a notepad and hands it to you.

Uh, yeah, but I'm afraid you're not going to like it, sir. Sway could be as high as 12 feet. Oh my God. We're going to have to shut the bridge down. Tell the police. We'll set up barricades on the north and south ends. How long should I tell them to divert traffic? I don't know.

I'll update as necessary. This is an emergency. These are orders. They take effect immediately. Yes, sir. You bundle up and head outside to wait for the police with the barricades. In 14 years, the Golden Gate has never been closed. Not for anything. Sloshing your way through the rain,

you can only hope that the traffic police get the bridge closed in time. You say a prayer for the motorists, and also for the bridge itself. On a Saturday night in 1951, a rainstorm with winds up to 69 miles an hour ripped through the channel. The Golden Gate was shut down for three hours, the first closing in its history. At first, bridge directors denied that the winds had any major structural effects.

Manager James Ricketts claimed that the sway of the bridge reached only 24 inches. But bad news soon emerged. An internal report found that during the worst of the storm, the center span swayed almost 11 feet in either direction. Vertical suspenders had been torn loose from their sleeves. If the storm had lasted 30 minutes longer, there was a strong possibility the Golden Gate Bridge would have collapsed. Finally, bridge directors saw the real danger they had ignored. They quickly appropriated $3 million to reinforce the roadway with new steel struts, strengthening the bridge's ability to withstand strong winds. Thirty years passed before the bridge faced its next challenge.

On May 24, 1987, the 50th anniversary of the bridge, approximately a quarter million eager pedestrians crowded the site to celebrate. For the tribute, the bridge was closed to car traffic. Overwhelmed by the unexpectedly huge crowds, authorities on the north and south sides of the bridge allowed them to begin crossing at the same time. But instead of passing in the middle of the bridge as planned, the two crowds became enmeshed, clogging the center of the bridge and bringing all foot traffic to a standstill. Normally, there was a slight arch in the roadway at the bridge's center point, but the massive weight of 31 million pounds of people caused the roadway to flatten out completely. Such a weight could put too much stress on the suspension cables, possibly destabilizing the entire bridge. But the bridge held,

and the crowd soon dispersed. Joseph Strauss was given full credit for designing the Golden Gate Bridge, and he never suggested otherwise. The bridge directors went along with Strauss and never mentioned anyone else in the press releases or official accounts of the bridge's construction. By the time the Golden Gate's lead engineer Charles Ellis died in 1948, he'd faded from a position of prominence into total obscurity. Following his 1931 dismissal, Ellis spent three years searching for employment in the Depression-era Midwest. Finally, he secured a professorship at Purdue, where he worked until his death, never mentioning his involvement in the bridge's construction. It wasn't until a 1986

history on the Golden Gate that light was shed on the full story of the bridge and on Ellis' major contributions. Charles Ellis' name is still not found on the bridge's original plaque, although a separate plaque with his name was installed in 2012. The Golden Gate remains the result of a collaborative effort. Engineers like Joseph Strauss, Charles Ellis, and Leon Moiseff made the bridge lighter, stronger, taller, and longer than any that had come before. The bridge helped to transform and define the city around it. But perhaps most importantly, the Golden Gate Bridge functions as an extension of the natural beauty of the bay.

To this day, it stands as a mirror of nature, of the hills and swelling sea, and of the city to which it welcomes travelers and bids them farewell. From Wondery, this is episode four of America's Monuments from American History Tellers. On the next episode, it's one of the most famous mansions in America, a monument to rock and roll and celebrity access. But before all that, Graceland was a sanctuary for a poor boy from Mississippi named Elvis, one whose talent brought him wealth, fame, and ultimately tragedy. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free

on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by George Ducker, edited by Dorian Marina. Our senior producer is Andy Herman. Our executive producers are Jenny Lauer Beckman and Marshall Louis, created by Hernán Ló Lopez for Wondery. Are you in trouble with the law?

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