<P> Before the bridge was built, the only practical short route between San Francisco and what is now Marin County was by boat across a section of San Francisco Bay . A ferry service began as early as 1820, with a regularly scheduled service beginning in the 1840s for the purpose of transporting water to San Francisco . </P> <P> The Sausalito Land and Ferry Company service, launched in 1867, eventually became the Golden Gate Ferry Company, a Southern Pacific Railroad subsidiary, the largest ferry operation in the world by the late 1920s . Once for railroad passengers and customers only, Southern Pacific's automobile ferries became very profitable and important to the regional economy . The ferry crossing between the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco and Sausalito in Marin County took approximately 20 minutes and cost US $1.00 per vehicle, a price later reduced to compete with the new bridge . The trip from the San Francisco Ferry Building took 27 minutes . </P> <P> Many wanted to build a bridge to connect San Francisco to Marin County . San Francisco was the largest American city still served primarily by ferry boats . Because it did not have a permanent link with communities around the bay, the city's growth rate was below the national average . Many experts said that a bridge could not be built across the 6,700 ft (2,042 m) strait, which had strong, swirling tides and currents, with water 372 ft (113 m) deep at the center of the channel, and frequent strong winds . Experts said that ferocious winds and blinding fogs would prevent construction and operation . </P> <P> Although the idea of a bridge spanning the Golden Gate was not new, the proposal that eventually took hold was made in a 1916 San Francisco Bulletin article by former engineering student James Wilkins . San Francisco's City Engineer estimated the cost at $100 million, which would have been $2.12 billion in 2009, and impractical for the time . He asked bridge engineers whether it could be built for less . One who responded, Joseph Strauss, was an ambitious engineer and poet who had, for his graduate thesis, designed a 55 - mile - long (89 km) railroad bridge across the Bering Strait . At the time, Strauss had completed some 400 drawbridges--most of which were inland--and nothing on the scale of the new project . Strauss's initial drawings were for a massive cantilever on each side of the strait, connected by a central suspension segment, which Strauss promised could be built for $17 million . </P>

Why did they make the golden gate bridge
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