UPDATED: August 28, 2022

On October 17, 1989, at 5:04pm, the Loma Prieta Earthquake^[1] struck the San Francisco Bay Area. My father Chris G. Gasparich and I were the only ones in our family who were still living in the area. When I was able to make my way home from work that day (a long journey with all the cracked streets and nonfunctioning traffic signals), I called my dad to make sure all was well. Always a very reserved and calm man, he kept repeating that he’d been on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge at 4:59. When the earthquake hit, he was just making his way onto Interstate 80 and thought he had a flat tire. Since his house on the water had suffered extensive damage, we spent the rest of the conversation talking about that. It was not until the next day that I finally understood why his being on the bridge moments before the earthquake had him so rattled.

The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, referred to simply as the Bay Bridge, is actually comprised of two bridges that connect San Francisco to the East Bay via a 540 foot tunnel through Yerba Buena Island. The two spans are of equal length, but have always been of different design. The story of how the bridge came to be dates back to when the transcontinental railroad was completed and ended in Oakland. Passangers had to take a ferry to get to San Francisco. Plans to build a bridge were discussed as early as 1872, but it was not until 1929 that the California Toll Bridge Authority was created and authorized, along with the Department of Public Works, to build a bridge. In January 1931 Charles Purcell was hired as Chief Engineer. His first hurdle was access to Yerba Buena, an island in the Bay owned by the US Navy. It took two years before final permission for access was granted by the Departments of War, Navy and Commerce. Another hurdle was the relocation of 12 massive underwater telephone cables that were in the way.

Construction on the bridge finally began on July 8, 1933. The western span, which connects San Francisco to Yerba Buena, is a double suspension bridge like the Golden Gate Bridge^[2]. The eastern section was a cantilever bridge. During the three years it took to build, 24 workers perished.

The Bay Bridge officially opened in 1936, six months before the completion of the Golden Gate Bridge. On January 15, 1939 the San Francisco TransBay Terminal^[3] opened and serviced the Key System: electric commuter trains that ran along the south side of the lower deck. Cars traveled the two-way upper deck while trucks, buses and Key trains shared the lower deck. When the Key System abandoned rail service in April 1958 the upper deck was designated for all traffic traveling west and the lower deck was designated for all traffic traveling east (contrary to what is filmed in the movie The Graduate).

Between 1945-1949 there were plans to build a second Bay Bridge parallel to the first, though these plans were ultimately quashed by Mayor Elmer Robinson.

When the Loma Prieta Earthquake struck, a section of the upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck. Because Game 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics was about to start, traffic on the bridge was unusually light. Only one person was killed when emergency crews misdirected her onto the upper deck where she drove in the wrong direction and over the lip of the gap. 

It took a month to make repairs. While the damaged portion of the bridge was fixed, the entire span still required major retrofitting. An analysis proved that retrofitting would end up costing more than simply replacing the span and so, in 2002, construction began on a self-anchored bridge that was completed in 2013. The new eastern span is a single deck with side by side eastbound and westbound lanes. It is the widest bridge in the world that includes a bike/pedestrian lane connecting Oakland to Yerba Buena.

When the old span was demolished, an 18-inch steel troll was discovered welded to the bridge. Blacksmith Bill Roan had installed it there during repairs following the earthquake. Another steel troll was installed, without permission, to an outside rail of the new span where only maintenance workers could see it. When stories about these trolls were made public, the original troll was put on display at the Oakland Museum for four months and the newer troll was moved so that it is now visible to pedestrians and cyclishts using the pathway onto the span.

On March 5, 2013 a public art installation called The Bay Lights was installed on the vertical cables of the western span. The installation, consisting of 25,000 LED lights, was designed by artist Leo Villarreal, who used algorithms to generate patterns like rainfall, fish and expanding rings. The nonprofit Illuminate the Arts^[4] has been able to raise the funds necessary to keep it a permanent exhibit.

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^[1] Loma Prieta Earthquake: story coming October 17th

^[2] Golden Gate Bridge: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=4916

[3] TransBay Terminal: https://thesanfranciscophoenix.com/?p=3701

[4] Visit their website at https://sif.illuminate.org

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