A photo from the MTC archive shows the opening of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge in August 1956 was an odd happening.
A horse, mail cart, truck and a smattering of meandering people can be seen on the span, hardly the mass of wall-to-wall humanity that the Golden Gate Bridge had when that span opened in 1937. They all seem a bit underwhelmed.
It was on Aug. 31, 1956, that Gov. Goodwin Knight dedicated the bridge. The next day, Sept. 1, the John F. McCarthy Memorial Bridge – as it is officially known – opened for traffic.
The bridge’s start was ignominious. It was not the governor who first graced the bridge in a classic car, nor was it McCarthy or a local mayor. The first vehicle to cross the bridge was a “rickety old truck,” the Marin Independent Journal observed.
There had long been talk of a bridge linking Marin and the East Bay, but the real impetus for the bridge came after a two-month ferry strike in 1947, followed by a second five-month walkout in 1949.
In June 1951, $62 million in state bonds was approved for construction of the bridge and another $4 million in state money was made available. Aesthetics were sacrificed for cost savings as the bridge was designed. It paid off: The bridge came in $4 million under budget.
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