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On 6/14/2022 at 8:21 PM, tigerbait said:

I really like this coin.  They sold this commemorative at the toll booths at the Golden Gate bridge opening in 1936.

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May 27, 1937 (official opening) only 21 days after the Hindenburg crashed. I cannot account for the discrepancy.

[Fast (face-saving) edit... Your coin commemorates the opening of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge; not the Golden Gate.]

Edited by Quintus Arrius
Fact-checking
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On 6/14/2022 at 7:29 PM, Quintus Arrius said:

May 27, 1937 (official opening) only 21 days after the Hindenburg crashed. I cannot account for the discrepancy.

[Fast (face-saving) edit... Your coin commemorates the opening of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge; not the Golden Gate.]

Both opened within a year? Imagine being a ferry operator. 

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  • Member: Seasoned Veteran

Regarding the ferries, the Golden Gate Bridge has always been limited to cars and other motor vehicles, as well as pedestrians, and it entirely supplanted ferry service until recent years, when congestion brought them back as an alternative to the highways. The Bay Bridge limited automobiles to two-way traffic on the upper deck, while electric trains of the Key System operated on the lower deck, along with trucks and busses. Once again, growing auto congestion forced a change in 1958, when the trains ceased running, along with the ferries that had continued until that time. The upper deck was thereafter restricted to all motorized westbound traffic, while the lower deck handled all eastbound traffic. Pedestrians have never used that bridge, so far as I know.

As a native San Franciscan, I've been across both bridges countless times, though I was born too late to buy a Bay Bridge Half Dollar onsite.

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