Building the Golden Gate Bridge:
1933 - 1937
(8 of 10 photos)
The Bridge Builders
The safety net that stretched the length of the bridge gave the workers a sense of protection and enabled them to move about more freely.
It could not prevent the tragedy of February 17, 1937.
Just three months before opening day, a scaffold beneath the roadway broke loose, ripping through the net, plunging it into the water. Ten men on the scaffold fell to their deaths. A plaque at the San Francisco Tower honors their memory and that of another worker who had been killed earlier.