Panama Scouting - Day 7 - Panama Canal history
We visited the Panama Canal and toured the Visitor Center at the Miraflores locks on the Pacific side.
The idea of a canal was first explored by the Spanish in the 1500s but because of the jungles, mountains, and swamps was deemed impossible and it took another 300 years before a serious attempt was made by the French in 1880.
Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal in Egypt, lead the French effort. Incessant rains caused landslides, yellow fever and malaria plagued the workers, and the idea of a sea-level canal with mountains in the way caused Lesseps to propose a new plan with locks in 1888, but the French pulled funding from the project with 20,000 already lives lost to disease, landslides, and accidents.
The USA, under Teddy Roosevelt, bought the French assets for $40 million in 1902, and when negotiations with Colombia broke down, threw the US military might into Panamanian Independence from Colombia. One month after Panamanian Independence in November of 1903, the USA signed an agreement with the new government, creating the Canal Zone, and initiating building efforts in May 1904, using the French sea-level canal plans and equipment left in 1888.
Initial attempts were frustrating, as nothing had changed since the French attempt in the 1880s, but a railroad engineer, John Stevens, came aboard in 1905 and devised efficient methods to speed work and remove excavated soil using a railroad, and convinced Roosevelt that a lock system would be more effective given the terrain.
Chief Sanitary Officer (CSO), Dr. William Gorgas, embarked on a mission to eliminate mosquitos, which he believed carried yellow fever and malaria; he lead a large team of health workers who cleared pools of water and fumigated buildings and homes. The last case of yellow fever was in 1905, and cases of malaria dropped quickly and stayed low with the constant attention of Gorgas' crews.
In 1906, Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals came aboard and worked on clearing land across a nine-mile stretch of mountains so that the first concrete for the initial locks could be poured in 1909. The locks are built in side-by-side pairs, as are Seattle's locks, and each is 110 feet wide by 1000 feet long. The three locks across the 50-mile stretch of canal raise ships 85 feet above sea level to a man-made lake Gatun in the middle.
The Panama Canal and its locks officially opened on August 15, 1914. Of the 56,000 workers employed during the build between 1904 and 1913, approximately 5600 were killed.
The Canal Zone transitioned to Panama's ownership and management after President Jimmy Carter and Panama's leader Omar Torrijos signed a treaty in 1977 to turn over authority to the autonomous Panama Canal Authority on December 31, 1999.
Since 2000, Panama has added giant locks along the canal to support larger container and cruise ships. The added locks, which opened in 2016, have allowed an even greater number of international crossings between the Atlantic and Pacific, and expanded the value of the canal in world trade. The Canal celebrated its one millionth ship passage in September 2010, and during the Pandemic, saw more transport than ever before, so Panama is currently the strongest economy in Latin America.
Pretty cool for a country of fewer than 5 million people and a land mass smaller than South Carolina!
Aloha and good night from Panama City!
MaryBe y Miguel