GOLDEN GATE: BUILDING THE MIGHTY BRIDGE by Elizabeth Partridge and Ellen Heck, ill., Chronicle Books, October 2024, 60p., ISBN: 978-1-4521-3514-4

“Workers with steel and concrete are squaring off against fog and wind and pounding surf. They want to build the world’s longest suspension bridge.

People say it’s impossible. It's too far to span from land to land, across the wild, surging waters where the ocean meets the bay. The weather is wicked, with blinding, wet fogs and treacherous winds that will toss the workers into the water like paper dolls.

Maybe they’re right.

But…here come the trucks!

Have you ever walked across the Golden Gate Bridge? I highly recommend experiencing it.

Yes, you may want to pick a day with good weather. Or maybe you’ll thrill on getting swallowed up in the cold, bracing fog. Either way, I’ve found it a blast to sashay those three or so miles–up so high above the water–as one completes the trek across the Bridge and back. 

A decade ago, an excellent book about the Bridge was crafted by Dave Eggers and cut-paper artist Tucker Nichols. THIS BRIDGE WILL NOT BE GRAY taught me all sorts of tidbits about the Golden Gate Bridge. For instance:

Did you know that the Golden Gate Bridge was built in thousands of sections that were shipped from the East Coast to California by boats that passed through the Panama Canal?

Did you know that the U.S. Navy thought the bridge should be painted with yellow and black stripes so as to be readily seen by planes and ships?

Did you know that those thousands of sections of bridge that passed through the Panama Canal had been primed with an orange sealant paint? 

Did you know that the Bridge employs the art deco architectural style? (Art deco is also the architectural style of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building in NYC)

Now, Berkeley native Elizabeth Partridge, who two years ago won the American Library Association’s award for young people’s nonfiction, and illustrator Ellen Heck have created a picture book that will well-complement the Eggers book. 

GOLDEN GATE: BUILDING THE MIGHTY BRIDGE is a lyrical, beautifully illustrated yarn about many of the steps involved in building the Bridge. It's told from the point of view of a youngster living nearby the Gate.

“Concrete trucks roll from the batching plant to the pier, sending their wet, heavy mix sluicing down the tube they call the ‘elephant’s trunk.’

When the sun drops down into the Pacific Ocean, huge lights flood the pit so the work can go on. Night after night, the truck headlights sweep across your bedroom wall.

Hurry! the flickering lights seem to say.

Thousands of truckloads of concrete fill the hole, then the pier rises until it is 44 feet (13.4 metres) above the water.”

The story of the Bridge’s construction leads young readers to that thrilling day in May, 1937, when the Golden Gate Bridge opened for the first time. The book depicts the crowds joyfully flocking to the Bridge in order to traverse the Gate before a night of celebrations brings fireworks and good cheer.

“You feel like you’re right in the middle of the whole wide world. The vast Pacific Ocean stretches out behind you. America is in front of you, with her high soaring mountains and plains and rivers. And high above, where seagulls circle, the towers touch the sky”

The story is topped off with a two-page, fact-filled Afterword. It made me shiver to read about how those workers “walking the iron” had to have nerves of steel in order to stay alive. The author notes how “Some men who bluffed their way onto the bridge quickly climbed down and quit.”

Richie Partington, MLIS

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