This article explores the San Francisco - Oakland Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge as elements of the cultural memory of Northern California. Focusing on newly-recorded oral history interviews at the University of California, Berkeley, this article argues that the Bay Bridge and Golden Gate Bridge evolved as cultural symbols in the decades following their opening. Both bridges emerged as symbols for the region, but each with distinctive and different meanings, including humanity's triumph over nature, memorialization of returning troops from war, disaster and site of tragedy.