Wilkins, a former structural engineer and then newspaper editor for the San Francisco Call Bulletin, proposes a design for spanning the Golden Gate Strait. January 1870: Joseph Baermann Strauss is born in Cincinnati, Ohio.ġ872: Railroad executive and entrepreneur Charles Crocker announces to the Marin County Board of Supervisors that Central Pacific Railroad engineers had prepared plans and cost estimates for a suspension bridge crossing the Golden Gate Strait that would also carry rail cars.ġ872: Bridge designer and theorist Leon Moisseiff is born in Latvia.ġ876: Charles Alton Ellis, the engineer who will one day be instrumental in the design calculations for the Golden Gate Bridge, is born in Maine.Īpril 18, 1906: San Francisco is devastated by a massive earthquake and fire.ġ915: The Panama Pacific International Exposition opens in San Francisco to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal (a year after it opened).ġ916: James H. He reigned as Emperor Norton until his death in 1880.

He is the first to call publicly for the construction of bridges across the San Francisco Bay. By 1869, a gone mad and bankrupted Gold Rush merchant, he declares himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States, and begins issuing decrees. He is the son of an industrious London merchant and is determined to build a fortune in San Francisco. The ferry vessel Princess was owned by Sausalito Land and Ferry Company which gave free ferry passes to anyone that bought a lot in Sausalito.ġ869: Joshua Norton arrived in San Francisco in 1849. Land speculators claimed that Marin County real estate would increase in value due to its proximity to San Francisco.

Once a village called Yerba Buena with a population of about 400, San Francisco is now a city of 35,000.ġ868: Regular ferry service links San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County with the ferry vessel Princess. 1800s 1906 to 1937 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010sġ846: Captain John Fremont declares California’s independence from Mexico and names the mile-wide entrance to the San Francisco Bay as Chrysopylae, which means Golden Gate in Greek.ġ849: The population of San Francisco explodes after gold is discovered in northern California.

Wheel of fortune december 4 2002