The Golden Gate is the strait connecting San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. The strait is approximately eight kilometers long and between 1.6 and three kilometers wide. On 1 July 1846, before the discovery of gold in California, the entrance acquired a new name. In his memoirs, John C. Frémont wrote, "To this Gate I gave the name of "Chrysopylae", or "Golden Gate"; for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn." Since 1937 it has been spanned by the Golden Gate Bridge.
