The Golden Gate

Captions: (upper right) (left)John Fremont, a captain with the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers, gave the Golden Gate its name in 1846. "To this gate I gave the name Chrysopytae, or Golden Gate," he wrote nearly a hundred years before the bridge was built.; (middle) Completed in 1837, the Golden Gate Bridge is known around the world. Few people know that its name belonged first to the three-mile channel that links the bay and ocean. The first Europeans to see the Golden Gate were Spanish soldiers who discovered it by accident while marching north from Mexico in 1769. They called it "La Boca" (the Mouth) and "La Entrada" (the Entrance). Earlier still, the area's native Miwok called the channel "Mouth of the Sundown Sea".; (right) During the Gold Rush, San Francisco's harbor changed almost overnight from a sleepy frontier anchorage into a vital maritime center. In 1849 alone, 770 ships carried more than 91,000 passengers through the Golden Gate. For the next century San Francisco remained the west coast's major port - during World War II, ships transported 23 million tons of supplies and 1.65 million soldiers through the Golden Gate to Pacific battlefronts.