San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Description:

• Not as famous, perhaps, as the Golden Gate Bridge connecting The City with Marin County to the north, the double-decker San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is no less impressive as an engineering feat. It's also just as lovely in its own way, especially at night, when miles of lights outline its graceful shape and the steel cable spun like a spider web along its length. Opened for business in 1936 with a then-astronomical price tag, the part suspension, part cantilever, part tunnel, and part truss structure, is anchored by a concrete island descending 220 feet below the Bay. Another even more impressive feat of its engineering history is that after part of the span tumbled in the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, it was repaired and opened again for traffic within a month, safer than ever.
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