2014 marks the 100 year anniversary of the American engineering feat known as the Panama Canal.
The Isthmus of Panama was first explored by Europeans in 1501. Since that time, it has been a highly coveted and important strip of land. After Vasco Nunez de Balboa’s torturous trek from Atlantic to Pacific, it quickly became the crossroads and marketplace of the Spanish overseas empire. It remained under the Spanish empire for nearly 300 years (1538-1821).
The California Gold Rush in 1849 brought renewed American interest in finding the fastest way to cross the Isthmus and reach the Pacific coast. In 1855 the Panama Railway was completed, greatly increasing the ease and speed with which one could cross to the Pacific and the California gold fields.
But a waterway for shipping was still the most desired and necessary means of crossing the country.
Between 1880 and 1900, a French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps took control of the region and attempted unsuccessfully to create a sea-level (lock-free) canal across the isthmus. Beset by poor planning, fiscal mismanagement, inexperienced work forces and rampant disease, they spent more than $287 million dollars in the process. In 1894 a second French company took over the existing canal work, machines, and railway in an attempt to sell the assets.
By 1903, the US government had taken interest in the venture, and with the backing of France, encouraged Panama to declare independence from Columbia. President Roosevelt infamously stated: "I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me." The Hay/Bunau-Varilla Treaty was the result, granting the United States ‘sovereign’ rights, to a zone 10 miles wide by 50 miles long, in perpetuity. Panama then became a US protectorate and remained so until 1939.
It was in that zone that the US would construct the Panama Canal.
After purchasing the dilapidated French equipment and existing works for $40 million dollars, the Isthmian Canal Commission began oversight of the construction on the canal and the surrounding zone. The work towards completing the canal also included the construction of housing, cafeterias, hotels, water systems, repair shops, warehouses, and the other infrastructure necessary for the employment of the several thousand workers set to arrive.
The sea-level canal plan adopted by the French was replaced with the Gutan Lake and lock system developed by American engineers. The new plan would require the movement of an additional 170 million cubic yards of earth. The United States wasted no time in ordering and delivering the most state of the art steam shovels available.
When the US began construction on the canal in 1904 they purchased more than 100 large, railroad mounted steam shovels. These were the most modern steam shovels available, including a number of 95-ton Bucyrus Steam Shovels. These shovels were accompanied by steam powered cranes, crushers, mixers, dredges and drills. When the United States had completed the canal, they proceeded to sell the used steam shovels to mining companies around the United States.
Long before the canal completion date, the Camino de Cruces (Road of the Crosses) has surely earned its ominous moniker. The sheer rate of mosquito-borne mortality among French workers alone derailed and halted their progress. Within two years of the 1904 take-over date, the US had instituted a program of mosquito and disease control that nearly eliminated the spread of death and disease from mosquitos. Death from accident and other means still took the lives of thousands. Combined losses from the French attempt and American success at carving a canal across the Isthmus amounted to more than 27,000 casualties - 22,000 French workers and 5,600 American workers.
In 1914 the United States completed the 83 kilometer lock canal system, 401 years after Balboa’s disastrous crossing, at a cost of $375 million dollars. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken – named one of the modern wonders of the world - the canal greatly reduced the amount of travel time for goods and people moving from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans.
The presence of the Panama Canal has shaped Panamanian identity, and that of the global community, for a century now.
In the 1960s the Panamanian government began to pressure the United States for a renegotiation of the original treaty, due in part to military and political challenges within the country. By 1977 the Torrijos-Carter Treaties had set the pace for the eventual restored control of the canal and surrounding region to the Panamanian government. The full return of the canal to its namesake country, Panama, took place in 1999.
Today the canal is under pressure from larger ships and international competition. Learn more about the Panama Canal, then and now, from our guest speaker historian Noel Maurer on November 6th at 6pm.
Our fall 2014 Heritage Lecture series will be closed by Noel Maurer, as he examines the Panama Canal's influence on Panama, the United States, and the world. Maurer will chronicle the economic and political history of the Canal, from the failed French project of the 1880s through the final handover of the Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999, to the present day.
Reservations required! Please call 719-488-0880 or email rsvp@wmmi.org to reserve your spot now!
Casey Pearce
Programming and Communications
Western Museum of Mining and Industry
719-488-0880