Walls of Shop-Driven Rivets, Golden Gate Bridge, January 2026

“There were about 600,000 field driven rivets in each tower.”

(The Golden Gate Bridge: Report of the Chief Engineer to the Board of Directors of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District – California, September 1937, pp. 148-9.)

Over the years, the focus of the written history of the Golden Gate Bridge has been on the spectacular construction of the 70,000-ton towers and the spinning of wires across the Golden Gate. The words “field driven” were soon dropped from the phrase “field driven rivets” in the written record. Each 70,000-ton tower is now commonly recorded as being held together with 600,000 rivets, which is clearly inaccurate.