The San Andreas fault was discovered by Andrew Lawson in 1895, who climbed into the faulted serpentinite well where the south tower of the Golden Gate Bridge was being poured. In spite of the extreme deformation of the serpentinite, Lawson declared the bridge perfectly safe. The events of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake would seem to support his conclusion: the ruptured strand was not the one he observed in the footprint of the bridge.