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60 free Golden Gate Bridge trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Golden Gate Bridge trivia quiz covers the most photographed bridge in the world from the first 1916 newspaper proposal to today's zipper trucks. The easy questions are ones any visitor can attempt: what the bridge crosses, which two places it links, what year it opened, what colour it is officially painted and what kind of bridge it is. From there it moves into the engineering: the length of the main span, the height of the towers, the wire in the cables, the deck replacement, the seismic retrofit and the safety net that created the Half Way to Hell Club. The harder end is for engineers and Bay Area history buffs: the Navy's proposed paint job, the strait's Greek name and who gave it, the banker who bought the bonds in the Depression, the man who did the maths and was fired for it, the sprinter who crossed first, the president who pushed the button, the 1987 anniversary crowd that flattened the span, the day the bridge sang in the wind and the tolls from fifty cents to more than ten dollars. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the bridge, its designers and its setting before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our San Francisco, famous bridges and American landmarks quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Golden Gate Bridge spans a strait connecting San Francisco Bay with which ocean?
The Pacific
The strait is about one mile wide, with water 372 feet deep in the centre of the channel.
Q 02The bridge links San Francisco to which county across the strait?
Marin
It carries both US Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the water.
Q 03How many main towers carry the bridge's two main cables?
Two
The cables pass over the towers and are fixed in concrete anchorages at each end.
Q 04Roughly how wide is the strait that the bridge crosses?
About one mile
Experts once said no bridge could be built across it because of the tides, the 372-foot depth and the winds.
Q 05What is the official name of the bridge's colour?
International orange
It complements the setting and helps ships see the bridge in fog.
Q 06Who chose the bridge's famous colour?
Irving Morrow
The relatively unknown residential architect also designed the towers' shape, the lighting and the Art Deco details.
Q 07What paint scheme did the US Navy suggest for the bridge so passing ships could see it?
Black and yellow stripes
Morrow's orange won out.
Q 08Who was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge project?
Joseph Strauss
An ambitious engineer and poet, he had built some 400 drawbridges but nothing on this scale.
Q 09For his graduate thesis, Strauss had designed a 55-mile railroad bridge across which stretch of water?
The Bering Strait
He promised the Golden Gate could be built for $17 million after the city engineer estimated $100 million.
Q 10Which engineer, credited by the Bridge District in 2007 with the design, was fired by Strauss in 1931 and finished the calculations unpaid?
Charles Alton Ellis
He worked 70 hours a week for free during the Depression and turned in ten volumes of hand calculations.
Q 11Which engineer of New York's Manhattan Bridge conceived the final suspension design and its deflection theory?
Leon Moisseiff
His later Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in a windstorm in 1940 because of aeroelastic flutter.
Q 12Whose 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article made the proposal for the bridge that eventually took hold?
James Wilkins
He was a former engineering student, and the city engineer put the cost at an impractical $100 million.
Q 13Which powerful company opposed the bridge as competition for its ferry fleet and sued to stop it?
Southern Pacific Railroad
Q 21How long is the bridge's main span?
4,200 feet
It was the world's longest until 1964, when a New York span beat it by sixty feet.
Q 22How tall are the bridge's towers above the water?
746 feet
They were the tallest on any suspension bridge until Mexico's Mezcala Bridge in 1993.
Q 23Roughly how many miles of galvanised steel wire went into the two main cables?
80,000
Each cable is made of 27,572 strands, and each tower holds about 600,000 rivets.
Q 24Which New York span took away the Golden Gate's title of longest suspension span in 1964?
The lawsuit prompted a mass boycott of the ferry service.
Q 14Which North Coast county refused to join the Golden Gate Bridge District because its residents opposed the bridge?
Humboldt
The district was created by a 1923 act of the state legislature.
Q 15Which banker agreed in 1932 to buy the entire $30 million bond issue so construction could begin?
Amadeo Giannini
He founded San Francisco's Bank of America and acted to help the local economy after the Crash.
Q 16On what date did construction of the bridge begin?
January 5, 1933
The project cost more than $35 million and came in ahead of schedule and $1.3 million under budget.
Q 17The steelwork was built by McClintic-Marshall, a subsidiary of which corporation?
Bethlehem Steel
Its founders, Howard McClintic and Charles Marshall, were both Lehigh University men.
Q 18What did workers saved by Strauss's movable safety net call themselves?
The Half Way to Hell Club
Nineteen men were saved by the nets over the course of the project.
Q 19How many men died in falls during construction of the bridge?
Eleven
Ten of them died on a single day, 17 February 1937, when a scaffold broke through the net.
Q 20Strauss placed a brick from a demolished hall of his alma mater in the south anchorage. Which school?
University of Cincinnati
The brick came from McMicken Hall.
Verrazzano-Narrows
The Golden Gate still has the second-longest main span in the Americas.
Q 25Which Japanese span, opened in 1998, overtook the Golden Gate as the world's tallest suspension bridge?
Akashi Kaikyo
At its opening in 1937 the Golden Gate had been both the longest and the tallest suspension bridge in the world.
Q 26Ellis designed a steel arch at the southern end so that which pre-Civil War fortification would not have to be demolished?
Fort Point
The fort, historically the Castillo de San Joaquín, is now a National Historic Site.
Q 27Who was the first person to run across the bridge from end to end on its opening day?
Donald Bryan, a college sprinter
About 200,000 people crossed on foot or roller skates the day before cars were allowed.
Q 28Which president pushed a button in Washington to signal the official start of vehicle traffic?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Weeks of civic celebrations called the Fiesta followed.
Q 29What was the title of the official song chosen for the 1937 opening?
There's a Silver Moon on the Golden Gate
Strauss wrote a poem, The Mighty Task is Done, which is now displayed on the bridge.
Q 30What was the car toll when the bridge opened in 1937?
50 cents
It was collected in each direction; tolls have been southbound-only since 1968.