Cold Open

It’s 1936, in San Francisco.

Bridge builder Al Zampa is several hundred feet in the air, working on one of the towers of what will eventually become the Golden Gate Bridge. Today, Al and his fellow workers are stringing up and bolting in the huge cables that will help distribute weight across the entire bridge. 

It’s slow, dangerous work involving many pairs of hands and a lot of coordination. Up here in the mist, visibility is low. The condensation makes everything damp and slippery, and there’s no rigging to keep Al tethered to his post. A sudden gust of wind could easily knock him off balance, and there’s little for him to grab onto if that happens.

The only safeguard in place is a large net down at the base of the bridge, close to the rocks. It stretches out ten feet past the bridge’s edge. It should be able to catch anyone who has the misfortune of slipping. But with the wind, the unpredictable weather, and the height, that’s not always a guarantee.

But Al understands the dangers of his job; years of experience have made him comfortable working up high with nothing but his own hands to keep himself steady.

So confidently, Al moves toward the large crane being used to pull cables up to his workspace. He needs to push it forward before he can complete his next task. So gingerly, he steps around the crane to get a better grip.

But his foot lands at a bad angle, and he loses his balance. And before he has any chance to do anything at all, Al slips and falls.

His body spins and contorts in the air for several heart-stopping seconds. Then, Al lands directly in the safety net. But the force of his landing stretches the net down to the rocks, and Al slams up against them. But the net bounces him back up, leaving him injured, but alive.

Al Zampa is the first man to fall off the Golden Gate Bridge and survive. But even this close encounter with death won’t be enough to take Al off the job. For him and many other builders, it feels like an honor to work on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Because upon its completion, the Golden Gate Bridge will be 4,200 feet long, making it the longest suspension bridge in the world at that time. But the process of making such an architectural marvel will prove long and complicated, and it will be filled with both interpersonal conflict and many casualties, after work on the bridge begins on January 5th, 1933.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is January 5th, 1933: Construction Begins on the Golden Gate Bridge.

Act One: Breaking Ground

It’s June 28th, 1921, in Chicago, twelve years before the Golden Gate Bridge will begin to be built.

Joseph B. Strauss stands proudly in his office, looking down at his official design submission for a bridge connecting the city of San Francisco to Marin County.

The idea for a bridge across the San Francisco Bay has been kicked around since as far back as the 19th century. But with the advent of the automobile, the demand has become more pressing. Without a safe passage across the strait, drivers currently have to drive around the entirety of the bay or board a ferry to traverse the choppy and unpredictable bay waters. Now, after decades of discussion, the city of San Francisco has finally begun its hunt for a man who can design and oversee construction of what will become known as the Golden Gate Bridge.

And after spending four years on a design, Joseph hopes the job will fall to him. But his idea for the bridge is an unconventional one. In a sense, he's not building one bridge, but two, combining two types of design, a suspension bridge and a cantilever one.

Already, Joseph has received a near-constant stream of warnings and criticism from his colleagues in the engineering field. They think his is a dangerous plan, and they don’t believe it can work. But Joseph has never been one to bend to the opinions of others and now is no exception.

By this point, Joseph has already established himself as an expert in the field of civil engineering. He’s overseen the construction of around 400 bridges across the United States. But Joseph isn’t well-liked by most of his peers. His determination sometimes rubs people the wrong way — where he might see himself as strong-willed, others often see him as selfish and short-tempered.

But despite his reputation, Joseph is one of the only few engineers who was asked to submit their ideas to the Golden Gate project. So he feels a certain sense of pride as he finishes packing up his plans and sending them to the San Francisco City Engineer.

He’s confident in his submission, but Joseph doesn’t want to leave anything to chance. So, he decides to move his entire business from Chicago to San Francisco, in order to campaign for his idea in person. It’s a gamble that pays off. In 1929, over a decade after Joseph began his plans for the Golden Gate Bridge, his dream comes true: his design is chosen over his competitors.

But the triumph comes with a steep workload. A bridge of this scale requires years of planning, including tedious coordination with the city of San Francisco. On top of that, Joseph now needs to amass a team of experts to help him realize his vision.  

One of the most important members of this elite crew is someone Joseph brought with him from Chicago: the well-respected design engineer, Charles Alton Ellis. If Joseph has a reputation for being bull-headed and aggressive, Charles is the exact opposite. He’s an ideas man who works slowly and methodically, in stark contrast to Joseph’s “full steam ahead” approach.

And it’s Charles who ultimately shapes Joseph’s plan for the Golden Gate Bridge. Like plenty of other engineers, Charles has issues with Joseph’s original hybrid option. To him, the hulking, unwieldy design simply won’t fit with the landscape in which the bridge is going to be built.

And as Charles tools with his boss's design, he considers the many factors that make this bridge specific to its location. The so-called “Golden Gate” itself is an area that experiences changing weather, where the temperature can vacillate wildly. To accommodate this, Charles proposes that they do away with the suspension-cantilever hybrid, and opt for a simpler suspension model that uses lighter steel. The reworked design emphasizes flexibility, allowing the metal to stretch in warm weather and contract in the cold, without endangering the structure itself.

But this choice doesn’t mean that the Golden Gate Bridge is just like any other structure that came before it. Charles’s plan still presents the bridge as a modern marvel, the longest suspension bridge to ever exist. Perhaps it’s a less daring design than what Joseph originally envisioned, but it’s still historic.

So, with little fanfare, Joseph agrees to change the plans to this new version. But after that, the comradery between the two men starts to falter. Charles wants more time to make sure the bridge is safe, but Joseph is impatient and demands immediate results. All the while, Joseph’s acerbic nature does nothing to help his public image. Some members of the engineering community even go so far as to suggest that it’s Charles, not Joseph, who is the real brains behind the operation.

And that’s the final straw for Joseph. In 1931, after years of working together, Joseph fires Charles from the Golden Gate project and removes his name from all official documents associated with the plans. It’s as if Charles never existed.

And once Charles leaves, Joseph will continue preparing for the construction of the bridge for two more years, working with other designers and engineers to get everything in place. Then, on January 5th, 1933, over a decade after Joseph first submitted his design, construction on the Golden Gate Bridge will finally begin. But like the design process, this will prove to be a difficult task, one that demands laborers put their life on the line each and every day.

Act Two: Hard Labor

It’s 1936, in San Francisco, three years into the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Al Zampa stands at the base of the construction site, looking up at the skeleton of the structure. There are other builders around him, clamoring at the entrance in the hopes that they might get picked to do this job. It’s a tough position to get — everyone wants a chance to help make history, including Al.

He’s been a bridge builder for decades and spent the last few years working a long string of jobs around the Bay Area. For months, he’s watched the construction on the Golden Gate Bridge while working on the Bay Bridge about 10 miles away. From his spot there high up on one of the towers, he had a perfect view of the Golden Gate as it slowly rose out of the mist. He’s heard talk about the historic size of the structure, and how its chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, is going to make history. That’s all Al needed to hear to know he wanted in — and fortunately for him, his decades of experience were enough to get him the job.

So today, Al is one of the lucky ones. He breezes past the hopeful laborers, through the entrance and into the site, ready for his first day of work on the Golden Gate Bridge.

He's working alongside some of the best builders in the country — men who traveled all the way to San Francisco specifically for this job. But Al knows as well as anyone that experience and skill don't guarantee safety. Anything can happen to anyone, anytime, regardless of talent.

In all Al’s years of working hundreds of feet up on a rig, he’s seen numerous men die. One man got hit in the face with a piece of equipment, staggered backwards, and fell off his post. Another lost his balance, fell into the wet concrete being poured into the base of the bridge, and was buried alive.

But fear can’t be allowed to slow down progress. Fatal accidents like these happen so often it’s just another part of the job. And when a man dies, the rest of the workers leave the site early, go get drunk, and try not to let this death keep them from going back to work the next day.

Joseph Strauss tries to mitigate the dangers of the Golden Gate project too. He insists on a rigid safety code and provides every device he can for workers. This includes the tried and true like hard hats, respirator masks, and an on-site hospital. And also the more novel — sauerkraut juice for any man suffering from hangovers, special hand and face cream to protect against the wind, and most notably, an enormous safety net stretching the entire construction area.

With these measures, Joseph hopes to defy the industry average of 1 fatality per $1 million spent on a construction project. But even with his safety regulations being among the most rigorous seen in bridge building, tragedy still strikes.

As Al starts working on the Golden Gate Bridge, he loses several men from his crew. Some get their fingers cut off in work-related accidents and have to leave. Others slip and fall, missing the safety net, and dying in the water below. Amid all this tragedy, Al has to keep his head down and focus on his work. After all, a bridge builder needs to keep his wits about him; Al doesn’t want to be the next one injured.

But one day, Al does make a mistake. His foot lands wrong, and he can’t keep his balance. The men working alongside him don’t have a chance to do anything about it — one second Al’s there, and the next, he’s gone, tumbling down through the air without any control.

By the time any of the other builders look down to see what happened, it’s already over. Al is lying in the safety net. He’s been badly hurt — landing in the net hasn’t kept him from smashing against the rocks. But he’s still alive.

And over the course of the build, 19 other men will also narrowly escape death thanks to the safety net stretched down on either side of the bridge. They will make up an elite group their colleagues affectionately call the Halfway to Hell Club. But others won’t be so lucky. In total, 11 workers will die before the Golden Gate Bridge opens to the public on May 27th, 1937. But despite the dangers of the job, Al Zampa will continue to say it’s the proudest work he’s ever done. Though it will take 50 years for him to actually cross the Golden Gate Bridge he helped build for the first time.

Act Three: The Legacy

It’s May 27th, 1987, in San Francisco, exactly 50 years after the Golden Gate Bridge opened to the public.

Al Zampa smiles as he walks onto the mile-long patch of road that stretches across San Francisco Bay. In the decades that followed his work on the bridge, Al never actually got a close look at the finished product. Once construction was done, his life took him to other projects away from the Bay, before he could enjoy the fruits of his labor. So today is a special one for him — it’s a chance to finally take in the lasting impact of his hard work.

In the 50 years since the bridge was completed, the Golden Gate has become famous as a legendary feat of engineering. Not only is it instantly recognizable with its unique vermillion color, but it’s also proved to be perfectly built to withstand the environment in which it exists. Through rain, wind, and snow, the bridge has remained as sturdy as ever.

Additionally, the bridge has become a crucial, iconic part of the city landscape, and an essential route of travel for countless San Franciscans. Only two years ago in 1985, the billionth vehicle crossed the Golden Gate. Today though, there aren’t any vehicles on the bridge. Instead, Al is joined with around 300,000 other people on foot who have come here to celebrate the structure’s 50th anniversary.

As Al makes his way through the crowd, he can see that some people are starting to get nervous about the sheer number of people all standing on the bridge at once. For the average person, it’s hard to tell exactly how much weight any bridge can hold, even one as famous and revered as the Golden Gate.

A small wave of anxiety washes over the crowd. Some people start half-joking about the bridge collapsing, and how this day of celebration could quickly turn into a terrible tragedy.

And in a sudden fit of urgency, some grab random objects and throw them off the bridge in hopes of lightening the load. Bicycles, and even a stroller, get tossed into the water.

But throughout it all, Al remains totally calm. After all, he knows this bridge inside and out — every rivet and every cable feels familiar to him. The bridge has also already stood the test of time. And more than anyone else, Al is confident that this structure will hold strong for centuries to come.

But in the next few decades, the story of the Golden Gate Bridge will see some strain. Despite Joseph Strauss’s attempt at erasing Charles Ellis’s impact on the bridge design, Charles will receive much more recognition in the 21st century, and even be commemorated with a plaque in 2012. Joseph will be remembered as both a genius of his craft and a difficult, complicated figure. And the countless men who helped build the bridge will be memorialized in books, including several about Al Zampa specifically, who along with countless others played an integral part in the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, which began on January 5th, 1933.

Outro

Next on History Daily. January 8th, 2016. Mexican and US armed forces capture the infamous drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mischa Stanton.

Music by Lindsay Graham.

This episode is written and researched by Georgia Hampton.

Executive Producers are Alexandra Currie-Buckner for Airship, and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.