Golden Gate Before the Bridge, San Francisco, California, 1932
from Kevin Starr’s Endangered Dreams:
“A decade of legal maneuvering, public debate, surveys, and engineering proposals followed. The Bridge had many opponents: shipping companies, who claimed that the Bridge would impede navigation; the Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries, Ltd., anxious not to lose its monopoly on the sole means of getting across the North Bay; the War Department, which claimed that the Bridge could be destroyed by naval gunfire in time of war and its collapsed structure would block the port; Sierra Club activists, who resented what they considered a needless intrusion of engineering onto a spectacular natural site.”
The Coast Road 
Smart dude, Fremont was.. you, too. Thanks! 🙂
Ahhh! Well, since you asked, or, did you? John C. Fremont fortuitously named the Golden Gate a few years before gold was even discovered in California.
According to the book California Place Names by Erwin G. Gudde, William Bright:
“He chose this name because he foresaw the day when the riches of the greater Orient would flow through the Golden Gate, just as the riches of the lesser Orient had once flowed into the Golden Horn.”
Read more about Chrysopylae and Byzantium at: http://tinyurl.com/bkhtjc
The text notes that: “Golden Gate Bridge was a name spontaneously used when the project was first discussed in 1917 by M.H. O’Shaughnessy, and Joe Strauss. Once the Bridge was incorporated as “the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District” in 1923, the name became official.
Anything else you’d like to know? Mid-March Louise Nelson-Dyble’s book will be out and I’m sure she’ll cover much more: http://tinyurl.com/b2b33e
🙂
Interesting. I didn’t realize the entrance to the bay was call ‘Golden Gate’ before I assumed the eponymous bridge was built.