The Source: Doyle Drive and the Father of the Golden Gate Bridge

You can’t talk transportation in the Bay Area without talking about bridges. Everybody knows the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge, but if you’re driving between the two, you travel on another bridge: an elevated and windy two-lane road through the Presidio called Doyle Drive.

REPORTER: In some spots, the lanes are three feet narrower than most highways. They’re separated by these little yellow pegs, but those don’t prevent accidents.

MAN: Yeah, this incredibly ugly highway...

REPORTER: This is a chunk of the concrete that’s supposed to be up there supporting the road. But I found it down here on the ground, and there are many more where this came from ... authorities say Doyle Drive has three times as many crashes as other roads of its type.

If you’ve taken it recently, you will have noticed that it’s currently under major reconstruction – the county, state and federal governments are spending something in the range of a billion dollars to make the 75-year-old roadway seismically sound.

But what you might not know is the story of how Doyle Drive got its name. KALW’s Steven Short crossed the bridge to bring us that story, in this installment of The Source.

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READER: At last the mighty task is done;

Resplendent in the western sun

The Bridge looms mountain high;

Its titan piers grip ocean floor,

Its great steel arms link shore with shore,

Its towers pierce the sky.

STEVEN SHORT: Thus begins the poem titled “The Mighty Task is Done,” written by Joseph Strauss, the Chief Engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge project. No one is mentioned by name in the poem – which is mounted on the bridge itself – and that’s just as well, since most of those names are forgotten today. 

One is still known, though, in part, because of the multi-year construction project that bears his name. That individual is Frank P. Doyle.

GAYE LEBARON: The fact that Doyle Drive is named for him was a great honor. I mean, there’s nothing named for the engineer, for heaven’s sakes, which is staggering when you think about it.

Gaye LeBaron, a senior columnist for the Press Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa, knows what she’s talking about when it comes to Frank Doyle.

LEBARON: I’ve been here a good many years and I have written a book on – two books! – two volumes, actually, on the history of Santa Rosa. And I teach Sonoma County history.

In Sonoma County, Doyle is more than just a name on a road project.

LEBARON: He was overwhelmingly the paternal figure of this community in the first half of the twentieth century.

Today, Doyle is greatly remembered in Santa Rosa. But when he was born in 1863, the Doyle family was living near Petaluma. His father, a Gold Rush miner turned businessman, was a prominent early figure.

The Civil War was underway at the time, and that caused Doyle, Sr., some problems...

LEBARON: They were Southern sympathizers at a time when Petaluma and Santa Rosa were at odds over the Civil War. They were in business in Petaluma, but they were in a Union town.

So that’s why the Doyles ended up in Santa Rosa. Frank Doyle grew up, and got a job as a clerk at the Exchange Bank. The well-liked young man eventually became the bank’s president … which is no surprise, really, since he started the bank with his father, in the late 1800s.

Doyle the Younger was president of the bank in 1906, when the great earthquake leveled much of the town. And he was instrumental in getting businessmen to start the Santa Rosa Chamber of Commerce.

LEBARON: God knows they needed one. They had no downtown and a reputation for having been hard-hit. And people were leaving! And they rebuilt the downtown after the earthquake and he went through the downtown and convinced people to give a couple of feet of their establishments in order to widen the streets for the automobile, which had a huge effect on how the downtown grew from there.

SHORT: He thought these automobiles might be around for a while.

LEBARON: I think he figured that out!

It’s worth noting, though, the world’s first gasoline pump was installed the same year as the Great Quake, so this wasn’t necessarily a sure thing.

But a decade later in 1916, cars were such a sure thing that various interests in northern California were trying to get a bridge across the Golden Gate.

LEBARON: And Doyle was very, very interested in this. And you have to remember, it’s hard to imagine this now in San Francisco, but this was a time when, first of all, northern California wagged the dog because they were the agricultural center. In 1920, it was the eighth ranking county in the whole country in agricultural production, not in the State. And in 1935, it was still tenth.

Doyle saw that it was essential that these perishable crops...

LEBARON: ...apples and prunes and eggs from Petaluma. And hops, which was huge here. And berries and walnuts and lots of other things...

…it was essential that they have a dependable way to get to their markets across the Bay, so that they weren’t pushed aside by other ferry traffic, or stopped altogether because of tides or rough weather.

LEBARON: So, what it took out, and what it brought in – the crossing was extremely important to Sonoma County.

Doyle, ever the paternal figure, worked diligently to advance the idea of the bridge, and to help Sonoma County interests as best he could. The perception during the Great Depression, for example, was that the locally owned Exchange Bank was less likely to foreclose on borrowers who needed an extension.

LEBARON: In fact, one of the bankers from one of the other banks told me years later that Doyle had – in some cases, where he really didn’t want to foreclose on people – had guaranteed the loans himself.

Try to get that kind of treatment at your local bank today!

Frank P. Doyle was no fool, though. He knew that a bridge across the Bay would not only provide market security to farmers, but would also increase tourist traffic, all the way to the Oregon border. The Redwood Highway was another of Doyle’s projects, which today contributes greatly to Sonoma County’s billion dollar tourist industry. No wonder he became known as “The Father of the Golden Gate Bridge.”

This was no empty title. Doyle headed the first meeting to formalize planning and construction of the bridge, drawing 300 people from the North Bay counties. Oh, and San Francisco was represented, too.

LEBARON: But they got these counties to agree, which was staggering, considering that in 1929 everything went south. And they were still able to start the bridge, to start construction. And as you know, the bridge came in – what was it? Under budget?

SHORT: It’s uh – the phrase I like is: It came in – it was completed on time, under budget, and it still works!

LEBARON: (laughs) Yeah, that’s it exactly. Say that – find something else that you can say that about!

Doyle was the first civilian to cross the bridge by car when it opened in 1937. And he participated in the “ribbon cutting” – which actually involved blow torches burning through thick chains – to officially open the bridge to traffic.

And while there was no ceremony involved, the members of the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District elected to name the access road on the San Francisco side of the bridge “Doyle Drive” to honor this civic and business leader for his efforts in making the project a reality.

Today, while the replacement work is informally referred to as “the Doyle Drive reconstruction,” the project’s website states that “Doyle Drive has been re-envisioned as the “Presidio Parkway.” 

Yet, officials insist, there are no plans to change the name. But how would that be received north of the bridge, if it happened?

LEBARON: Oh! I think there would be a lot of, kind of mild outrage ... probably led by – led by – by me! (laughs) I don’t know about outraged, but we’d be disappointed.    

That decision will likely be made before 2014, the year that the redesign of the Presidio Parkway – uh, I mean Doyle Drive – is projected for completion.

And if there is an official change some day, the Doyle Drive name will still live on, north of the bridge. Santa Rosans have their own “Doyle Drive,” which leads to Doyle Park – another community asset made possible by the Father of the Golden Gate Bridge.

In Santa Rosa, I’m Steven Short for Crosscurrents.

Want to know more about the Father of the Golden Gate Bridge? Read more about Frank P. Doyle here.