The Coronado Bridge officially marks its 40 year anniversary today. The bridge opened for traffic at midnight on August 3, 1969. The original architect was on hand to celebrate the bridges birthday over the weekend.
As many as 90,000 people use the bridge linking San Diego and Coronado every day. But when he was first approached about designing it, architect Robert Mosher says he wasn’t in favor of building a bridge at all. But he took on the project and lobbied to have it painted blue, which was not the original plan.
“They wanted to paint the bridge red. I said, 'you know, that that’s the wrong thing to do. Because if you put a red flag in front of a bull and you get in trouble,'" said Mosher. "And you’ve got a lot of people in Coronado who don’t like this bridge and to put a red bridge in front of them I think would be rather insulting in some respects.”
Mosher said he wanted the color to be blue so the bridge would blend in with the water and the sky.
