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Comment by Tabular-Iceberg | Hacker News Reader

This may be a good place to ask since so many people from the Bay Area hang out here. Was it ever gray, even for a short time? I know someone who adamantly claims to have driven over a gray Golden Gate Bridge back in the 70s, and being disappointed because of it. I suggested it might have been the bay bridge, but the two look pretty different, even if they had been painted in the same colour.

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There's a great children's history book titled "This Bridge Will Not Be Gray" by Dave Eggers that goes into the early days of the color choice. The bridge was shipped over from east coast metal works in orange, so it was not gray to begin with. The choice to keep it orange involved some public support so I think it is unlikely that it was ever painted gray, even temporarily.

Yes, my thinking is that if it ever was gray there would have been so much outcry that it is bound to show up in search results and be mentioned by any outlines of the bridge’s history.

I feel like I have a fuzzy early 80s childhood memory of a gray Golden Gate Bridge but I can’t be sure or prove it. Maybe it’s like a Bernstein Bears thing, where I have the same wrong memory as other people.

Can't you email the people on the official website https://www.goldengate.org/ and provide that information to the thread, as opposed to asking random strangers who could say anything?

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