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To the type of men who settled the West, there has been a challenge to the word IMPOSSIBLE. Such men were the explorers who heard it was IMPOSSIBLE to sail around Cape Horn. Nevertheless, they did it. Later the Pioneers were told it was IMPOSSIBLE to reach the West Coast with their covered wagons. They came.

The history of the West is a record of IMPOSSIBLE achievements ... building railroads through the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades ... scaling heights in San Francisco and Seattle with cable railways ... damming rivers deeply etched in forbidding canyons ... developing great industries on the outskirts of the Nation’s markets.

But one great dream seemed never to be realized—the bridge across San Francisco Bay. The vision wasn’t lacking ... that bridge has spanned the imaginations of a score of western leaders: William Tecumseh Sherman, George F. Allardt, Leland Stanford ... even Emperor Norton! But all of these were told the distance was too great, the tides too swift, the Bay too deep—and the bottom of the Bay was mud and silt, unsuitable for anchoring piers. When extensive borings showed that a solid rock ridge underlies the mud, the rock was said to be too far—235 feet­below the surface of the water. No known method of construction could sink a pier to such a depth.

Once again that challenging word: IMPOSSIBLE!

But, again, the IMPOSSIBLE has been done. You can see in this photograph that high towers stand solidly in the Bay. A double deck of steel reaches out almost a mile from the Oakland fill. Just beyond the far end are piers that reach down from 170 to 242 feet. On the other side of Yerba Buena Island, piers supporting the suspension towers plumb rock bottom at 180, 105, 220, 233 and 100 feet.

The bridge is already about half complete. All the foundations, the piers, are finished. Four more truss sections, and one cantilever, will unite Oakland and Yerba Buena. On the suspension side, the central anchorage must be crowned and soon the cables will be spun.

IMPOSSIBLE? You can see for yourself.

In the special field of construction, we find that machinery ... and the fuels and lubricants upon which efficient machinery depends ... have kept pace with the men who apply it. The vision and zeal of our own engineers is reflected in the faultless service of Associated fuels and lubricants on the job. Flying A gasoline ... other Associated fuels ... Cycol motor oils and greases ... and a long line of Associated Industrial Lubricants are setting a record in dependability and stamina.