The second most famous suspension bridge at the Golden Gate has been rebuilt and will open to the public at 12:30 on Saturday afternoon.

That would be the 132-foot-long bridge that leads across the cliffs to the Point Bonita lighthouse, a landmark that stands at the northern edge of the Golden Gate with the ocean at its feet and the green hills of Marin at its back. It is one of the most spectacular sights in California.

The Point Bonita light station is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and the National Park Service calls the point and the surrounding seascape "a secret jewel of the Bay Area."

The lighthouse has been in service on this spot since 1877, but the paths that lead to it have crumbled away at least three times, most recently when the old bridge became unsafe and had to be replaced. Without the bridge, the lighthouse had to be closed to the public. It was shut for two years.

The new bridge, a modest wonder with two towers, is narrow and sways in a strong wind. It took just more than a year to build and cost a bit over $1 million. To build it, construction crews had to rappel down the cliffs like mountain climbers, drill new eyebolts, string cables and construct a deck.

"It's all new," said Joel Dodd, project manager for Flatiron West of Benicia, which built the bridge.

Dizzying heights

The bridge is not for someone with vertigo - the view straight down is of cliffs and jagged rocks. Though the bridge does not cross water, the ocean pounds on either side.

And the view is stunning. To the north is the rugged Marin coast, with steep cliffs and rocks that stand like teeth out of the foaming ocean. To the west is the Pacific Ocean approach to the Golden Gate, bound on either side by shoals. One of them, the Four Fathom Bank - also called the Potato Patch Shoal - sometimes churns with white water. It can be extremely dangerous.

To the east is the somewhat better known Golden Gate Bridge, which celebrates its 75th anniversary next month. And just beyond that, the towers of downtown San Francisco rise on the city's hills.

The Point Bonita bridge leads to the star of the show on the Marin Headlands - the white and gray Point Bonita lighthouse, standing 124 feet above the ocean. The light flashes for four seconds. There is sound, too - a foghorn that operates when the famous ocean fog rolls in. The foghorn lets out two blasts every 30 seconds. There is also a radio beacon.

Even in the age of electronics, mariners depend on their eyes and ears, the light and sound from Point Bonita and other signals that line the Golden Gate. The tidal currents are tricky, the shores are lined with rocks and the fog can reduce visibility to zero.

The Point Bonita light can be seen from 18 miles out at sea.

Behind the scenes

The lighthouse is a shared operation. The Coast Guard operates and maintains the light and the signals, and the National Park Service manages it for visitors. The public is allowed over the bridge and into the lighthouse from 12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays.

Most of the personnel who work with visitors at Point Bonita are volunteers, and several were on hand this week, getting the lighthouse ready for the public.

One of them was Tom Delebo, an 80-year-old retired pediatrician. The lighthouse is his baby now, and he was busy the other day, wiping clean the glass of the Fresnel lens arranged around the light. The light does not shine in a complete circle, he pointed out, but only on five sides. The blank side faces a cliff.

Delebo usually cleans the lens once a month with his face to the lens of the lighthouse and his back to the ocean. "I love this," he said. "I really do."

Jim Brainerd, 70, who worked as a commercial fisherman and a truck driver, among other jobs, has been volunteering for 14 years.

"I've just passed 11,000 hours of volunteering," he said. "I clean and maintain the lighthouse and talk to the public about the story of Point Bonita.

"My wife says I can talk to anybody. I can talk to rocks, she says."

Point Bonita comes with a slice of history. It was the third lighthouse built on the West Coast, in 1855 - the first was on Alcatraz and went into service the year before.

Modified and moved

Point Bonita was built at the top of a ridge, 300 feet above the ocean. As it turned out, that was too high, and in a low-hanging fog the light could not be seen. In 1877, it was moved to its present location at the edge of a cliff.

It was almost impossible to reach, and Chinese laborers drilled a creepy-looking tunnel several hundred yards long. The tunnel ends near a sheer drop, with the lighthouse built on a tongue of land just beyond. It was reached by a narrow trail with cliffs on either side.

But the trail crumbled away, replaced by a wooden walkway; a winter storm in the 1950s wrecked that, and in 1954, the first bridge was built. The new bridge is the second.

For most of its life, the lighthouse was operated by lighthouse keepers. "They were paid $170 a year," Brainerd said. "And that included a place to live and food.

"Back in 1856, they used a 24-pound cannon firing blank rounds for a fog signal," he said, "and starting in 1857, a bell."

Later there was a steam-powered foghorn. Men and women crewed the Point Bonita light for 127 years. Finally, in 1982, the last personnel were removed and the light was automated. It was the last manned lighthouse on the Pacific Coast.

"It really is a beautiful place," Brainerd said.