From 1933 to 1936, San Francisco-born photographer Peter Stackpole watched as construction was carried out on the San-Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
A huge public works project that had been decades in the making, the steel structure was the largest and most expensive of its kind at that time.
Stackpole’s amazing, vertigo-inducing photographs document its progress during the three years, capturing the workers who risked their lives to build it, with nary a safety harness in sight as they toiled high up in the air.
The images launched the career of the then-20-something photographer, who would later become one of Life Magazine’s first staff photographers.
Check out some of his photographs below.
[via Fast Company, images by Peter Stackpole via the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco]