A span that continues to connect
50 years later, the Coronado Bridge’s iconic status masks its controversial origins.
SAN DIEGO — Before he was a politician, Ronald Reagan was an actor.
He knew about getting upstaged. So when the thengovernor of California arrived in San Diego 50 years ago to help dedicate the new bridge connecting the city and Coronado, he felt the value of the span had already been demonstrated, two days earlier, by a 21-yearold pregnant woman in Barrio Logan.
She’d gone into premature labor in her house near Crosby Street and National Avenue. A companion ran across the street to a fire station, where firefighters called for an ambulance. The baby girl came first.
After a successful delivery, they put mother and daughter in the ambulance. The driver could have taken the usual route and headed to Paradise Valley Hospital, 10 minutes away, but it dawned on him that there was now a closer emergency room.
He drove to Coronado, across the finished but notyet-open bridge.
Two days later, Reagan stood in front of a crowd of about 1,500 people gathered for a bridge celebration at the Hotel del Coronado. He was the featured speaker. Referring to the impromptu ambulance crossing, he said, “The bridge has already been dedicated far beyond anything I might do.”
Not that he and the event organizers didn’t try. Dedication day — Aug. 2, 1969 — was an hours-long celebration.
Runners and bicyclists crossed the bridge. Doubledecker buses took sightseers to mid-span, where a platform had been constructed for them to stand and take pictures. A mariachi band played. Souvenir medallions were distributed.
Reagan and other dignitaries rode in antique cars to the ferry landing in Coronado. Ferries had been the only way to get vehicles across the bay for 83 years, and this was their last hurrah. The antique cars rolled into San Diego and then to the bridge for a parade across it.
Reagan unveiled a plaque at the toll plaza. At the luncheon, he likened the bridge to a bride on her wedding day, and recited the four traditional accouterments for good luck:
Something old (San Diego, which was celebrating its 200th anniversary that summer).
Something new (the bridge).
Something borrowed (the toll booths, which had been moved from Northern California).
Something blue (the paint on the bridge).
“There is none quite so beautiful in the entire world,” Reagan said of the $47.6-million span.
It fell to Coronado Mayor W. Paul Vetter to remind people during the dedication that if what they were celebrating was a wedding, it was something of the shotgun variety.
“Coronado is gone — long live Coronado,” he said. “We’ll never be the same.”
It’s known officially as the San Diego-Coronado Bridge, and other than the California Tower in Balboa Park, there’s probably no local structure as instantly recognizable in photos, on postcards and in paintings.
It can feel as if it’s been curving gracefully across the water forever. That familiarity disguises its furiously contested origins.
The first proposal came in 1926 from the business empire of the late John D. Spreckels, who had owned and developed much of Coronado. “SPRECKELS CO. WILL BRIDGE BAY,” a banner headline read in the San Diego Union, a newspaper that was also among the legendary tycoon’s holdings.
Coronado residents balked, and so did the Navy. A building permit was denied. Two years later, a Los Angeles developer received a permit for a two-lane underwater tube, but that, too, drew resistance. It foundered, as did another bridge proposal, in the financial uncertainty of the Great Depression.
In 1935, Coronado officials saw plans for a new bridge over the Hudson River in New York and were intrigued by the financing arrangement — a precursor to the New Deal — that left city finances untouched. They proposed something similar.
Again the Navy pushed back. An admiral testified in a hearing that if a bridge got built, the Navy would look elsewhere to expand. That was enough to kill it.
By the mid-1950s, the car was becoming king, especially in California, and cities were eyeing bridges as replacements for ferries. A state senator from San Diego asked for a feasibility study of a bay crossing here, and it determined that either a bridge or a tube would be physically and financially doable.
Politically, though, the planets hadn’t aligned. Coronado residents repeatedly voiced their opposition in straw votes. The one exception was a 1955 tally, taken shortly after a strike by ferry workers. Navy officials remained resistant too, worried about hundreds of ships being trapped in the southern reaches of the bay if the bridge collapsed after an earthquake or from sabotage.
Behind the scenes, other forces were at work. The California Toll Bridge Authority, which would issue revenue bonds to pay for a bridge, was controlled by Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, and one of his key allies and campaign contributors in San Diego was John Alessio, owner of the Hotel del Coronado and land nearby, both of which would benefit from easier car access.
Alessio sold the hotel to M. Larry Lawrence, another Brown friend, and together they lobbied for the bridge. In 1965, the Army Corps of Engineers approved a building permit, and a year later the revenue bonds were issued.
Navy officials gave their blessing after securing guarantees that the span would be tall enough for warships to pass underneath.
In March 1967, ground was broken. Robert Mosher, an architect in La Jolla, was among those who had opposed the bridge.
“I think this is nuts,” he said. But when he saw it was going to happen anyway, he offered his services to “make it the most beautiful bridge” possible.
The key challenge was making it high enough for the Navy ships. A straightline bridge from downtown San Diego to Coronado would be less than a mile long but would resemble a roller coaster, with a big hill in the middle. That was impractical for several reasons.
Mosher’s design made the incline more gradual by stretching the roadway out for 2.1 miles and curving it 90 degrees.
The stability of the ground under the bay meant the bridge towers could be made out of concrete instead of steel, and Mosher saw an opportunity to put curved caps on them and echo the arches of another San Diego landmark, the Laurel Street Bridge over what is now state Highway 163.
“It will look like a thin ribbon of steel in the sky above the bay,” Mosher told a reporter, “and will be a real asset to the skyline.”
The San Diego newspapers reported on almost every aspect of the construction. There were stories about the arrival of the steel superstructure, built in the Bay Area, and about the concrete girders, made in Long Beach. Aerial photos showed the pilings going in.
Letters from residents argued about what the bridge should be called. And there was coverage of a 23year-old worker who was killed when a crane bucket knocked him off scaffolding and into the water.
One story in the Tribune, in April 1966, discussed the unusual 34-inch-tall walls that would line the outside of the bridge. Wide at the bottom and narrow at top, they were designed to steer any car tires that might hit them back on the road while also allowing “an excellent view of the entire bay,” Mosher said.
When an engineer was asked about the possibility of suicides there, he said: “If they are going to jump, they jump.”
Both the engineer and Mosher were “quick to point out that the bridge is of such beautiful design and reflects such magnificent grace that, they hope, few people would want to jump off it,” the reporter wrote. As it’s turned out, more than 400 people have gone over the side, and officials are now planning to erect suicide barriers.
Hard feelings carried over into discussions about what to call the bridge. The Chamber of Commerce sponsored a contest and people sent in names such as Serra (for Father Junipero Serra, founder of the California missions) and Coro San (an abbreviation of the two cities and a nod to the region as a gateway to Asia). Mosher liked Silver Gate (a name attached to the bay entrance in the late 19th century).
State officials favored geographical references like the names of the cities at either end of a bridge. But which one should get first billing here? San Diego’s City Council passed a resolution staking its claim as the largest municipality in the region. Coronado followed suit, with several council members noting that the all-important toll plaza would be at their end of the bridge.
Considering how unpopular the bridge was in Coronado, officials said, putting San Diego first in the name would add insult to injury. That’s what happened, though.
The state decided to call it the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge, later dropping “Bay.” In a 1968 editorial, the San Diego Union yawned at the controversy and predicted something that has proved to be true: Many (if not most) of the people who live here just call it the Coronado Bridge.
The future of the bridge may include some additions. There’s been only one major construction project since it was built, a $70.5-million earthquake-strengthening in 1999. Now Caltrans is studying options for a suicide barrier. And the Port of San Diego is raising money for a public art project that would light up the 30 towers from below.
First proposed in 2006, the lighting was supposed to be in place for this weekend’s 50th anniversary, but it is now targeted for 2020 — almost a century after bridge dreamers first made headlines.