Centuries before the Panama Canal was built, Panama was already the crossroads of the Western Hemisphere: good from then exotic places passed across the narrows isthmus. Its inhabitants have always been aware of the enormous advantage Mother Nature gave them with this unique and strategic geographic location. The chronicles of the nation indicate that they tried theirs best and succeeded in making the most of it from the time of the Portobelo fairs to the first transisthmian railroad and the present waterway, which is regarded as the eighth wonder of the world.

A bit of history. 

A trans-isthmian canal had been a dream since the beginning of Spanish colonization. Spain’s King Charles V was the first to envision a shortcut through the jungle that would ease the difficult crossing from one ocean to another. He ordered a survey of thee land in 1524. He was far from being disinterested. Peruvian riches had just been discovered and his concern was how to transport this new wealth safely to the Atlantic ports enroute to Spain.

                      Earth-moving techniques would have to be greatly improved before Charles V’s fantasy could materialize.

1735 - Navigating the Chagres River.

The United States showed interest in a canal as early as 1826. U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay’s instructions to his representative at the Latin American Congress in Panama called Simon Bolivar June 22, 1826 were to include amongst topics of discussions " a cut or a navigable canal connecting both Americas that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans". In 1835, the U.S. Senate urged the President of the United States to start negotiations with the governments of Central American countries and New Granada over a treaty that would "protect the companies intending to open a communication system between both oceans". Central America rapidly became a focus of attention as France, England and the United States looked for locations and means to avoid the difficult and long journey around Cape Horn. The construction of the Transisthmian Railroad in 1855, saving 8,000 miles, was only the first step in the search for a site to construct a canal.

In 1854, a multinational expedition-comprised of France, England, New Granada and the United States-tried in vain to penetrate the dense jungle to make a first attempt at planning a canal. Ulysses S. Grant, who as a young captain had watched 150 members of his military expedition die while crossing the isthmus of Panama on foot, was the first U.S. President to take a serious interest in building a canal across Panama.

The U.S. made the first positive move on January 10, 1870 when Navy Commander, Thomas O. Selfridge, received a letter from George M. Robeson, Secretary of the Navy, appointing him to the command of "an expedition to the Isthmus of Darién, to ascertain the point at which to cut a canal from Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean". Selfridge was to make three expeditions. He was sure that the best feasible route was in Panama and that the canal should be similar to the Suez Canal, engineered by Ferdinand de Lesseps and opened to traffic on November 17^th, 1869.

Competition between France and the United States was fierce. In 1878 the French succeeded in obtaining a concession from Colombia to dig a waterway in Panama. The right to dig a canal along the route of the U.S.-built railroad had been obtained by a French naval engineer, Lt. Lucien Napoleon-Bonaparte Wyse, who had made two short trips to Darien with another navy officer Lt. Armand Reclus and Panamanian engineer Pedro Sosa in 1876-77. Wyse, the illegitimate son of Napoleon Bonaparte’s niece, Princess Laetitia, sold the concession the same year to Ferdinand de Lesseps, who wanted to repeat his Suez success and aimed at constructing a sea-level canal.

1886 The French Canal as planed.  Notice: The Chagres River diverted.

 (1881 - French Arrival in Colon City, Panama)

The Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interocéanique started operations in 1881. The French effort to build a canal moved more than 4.5 million cubic yards of earth on the Atlantic side, including the canal excavations, deviations and the port. They finished that sector almost up to Bohio, eight miles south of Gatun. It was to be the "venture of the century" and for De Lesseps, the realization of a lifetime. But fate and above all an enormous lack of planning turned it into an unfortunate disaster. After seven years of fighting diseases and problems of the jungle terrain, De Lesseps had to admit a sea level canal was not feasible. Yellow fever, malaria and permanent plagues took their toll among black workers brought from French Antilles. Some historians would number deaths for that period at 5,000, others up to 20,000. Nevertheless, de Lesseps resumed excavation in 1894 but was forced to abandon the project at the turn of the century. His hope of becoming the digger of the "Big Ditch" vanished, as an immense financial scandal involving corruption of politicians and financiers in France left the company bankrupt.

(1891- Pa  Panama Canal Company Liquidation Court Trial in Paris France).

Digging a canal was becoming a military imperative for the United States since 60 days were necessary to complete the journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic via Cape Horn. One possible route was through Nicaragua but the French represented by De Lesseps’ former chief engineer Philippe Bunau-Varilla began lobbying to have the U.S. buy out what remained of the French company.

Finally, in 1902, the U.S. Congress authorized construction of an interoceanic canal of Panama. A treaty was negotiated with Colombian officials who granted the U.S. a 99-year concession with an option for renewal. The treaty was rejected by the Colombian legislature on the grounds that it infringed Colombia’s sovereignty and provided insufficient remuneration.

With Bunau-Varilla’s assurance that the U.S. would support it, the province of Panama saw an opportunity to uprise against Colombia. The U.S. battleship Nashville standing off the Isthmus and Americans operating the railroad impeded Colombian troops from suppressing the revolt. Panama declared its independence in 1903 and was recognized immediately by the U.S. government. "Panama was born with the U.S. Navy for a midwife", wrote Kenneth C. Davis, in his book Don’t Know Much About History.

The treaty, rejected by Colombia, was hastily modified by Bunau-Varilla, appointed as Panama’s Minister Plenipotentiary in Washington. It gave the U.S. the ability to exercise "the rights, power and authority which the canal was to be built. The treaty signed by U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and Philippe Bunau-Varilla was ratified by Panama in February 1904. The same year the U.S. purchased the French company properties for $40 million, gave a $10 million compensation to Panama’s government and started excavating.

1909 - Arrival of SS. Ancon with 1500 laborers from Barbados at the Cristobal Port in Colon)

The U.S. undertook a major sanitary effort under Col. William C. Gorgas, wiping out the diseases that defeated the French. The monumental construction was completed in ten years at a cost of about $387 million. Its triumphant culmination was due principally to the engineering and administrative skills of John F. Stevens and Col. George W. Goethals. They had to dig through the Continental Divide, create artificial lakes and earth dams, build three sets of twin locks and solve environmental problems of enormous proportions. Goethals, according to McCullogh, author of The Path Between the Seas, a definitive history of the Canal, completed the Canal ahead of time and under budget and on August 15, 1914 the U.S. cargo ship Ancon made a historic first transit while the war was raging in Europe.

No other construction in the world in the world has such a long history of personal defeats and victories, of heroism and great engineering. Today, looking at the ships transiting through the locks with their huge gates, one cannot but wonder at this manifestation of man’s genius at its best.

A few names of those who contributed to make the canal what it is:

·      Paul Gauguin, the French impressionist painter worked on the French Canal in Panama during the spring and early summer of 1887.  He had come to Panama to purchase land on Taboga Island so that he could live in an “island paradise”.  He spent all his money for the passage, thinking he could live off the land when he got to Panama.  When he found he could not, he had to take job as a common laborer to earn enough money to go to Martinique.  He later went to Tahiti and spent the rest of his life painting native and landscapes in his “paradise island”.

·      Giuseppe Garibaldi, the grandson of the Italian liberator was a special assistant to Col. George W. Goethals during the construction of the canal.

·       Ulysses S. Grant (1868-1876), who as a young captain crossed the Isthmus of Panama before the railroad was built.

·      Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first U.S. president to transit the Panama Canal on July 11, 1934.

The Panama Canal Locks, which lift ships up 25.9 m (85 ft) to the main elevation of the Panama Canal, were one of the greatest engineering works ever to be undertaken at the time, eclipsed only by other parts of the canal project. No other concrete construction of comparable size was undertaken until the Hoover Dam in the 1930s. The total length of the lock structures, including the approach walls, is over 3 kilometres (nearly two miles).

The locks, which have a total of six steps, limit the maximum size of ship which can transit the canal, known as Panamax. Each of these steps has two lock chambers, doubling the amount of traffic that can be handled; together they raise ships from sea level to a height of 25.9 m (85 ft).

There are three sets of locks in the canal. A two-step flight at Miraflores, and a single flight at Pedro Miguel, lift ships from the Pacific up to Lake Gatun; then a triple flight at Gatun lowers them to the Atlantic side. All three sets of locks are paired; that is, there are two parallel flights of locks at each of the three lock sites. This, in principle, allows ships to pass in opposite directions simultaneously; however, large ships cannot cross safely at speed in the Gaillard Cut, so in practice ships pass in one direction for a time, then in the other, using both "lanes" of the locks in one direction at a time.

The lock chambers are 33.53 meters (110 ft) wide by 320.0 meters (1050 ft) long, with a usable length of 304.8 metres (1000 ft). These dimensions determine the maximum size of ships which can use the canal; this size is known as Panamax. The total lift (the amount by which a ship is raised or lowered) in the three steps of the Gatun locks is 25.9 m (85 ft); the lift of the two-step Miraflores locks is 16.5 m (54 ft). The single-step Pedro Miguel lock has a lift of 9.5 m (31 ft). The lift at Miraflores actually varies due to the extreme tides on the Pacific side, between 13.1 m (43 ft) at extreme high tide and 19.7 m (64.5 ft) at extreme low tide; the tides on the Atlantic side, however, are very small.

The Panama Canal is 50 miles long from deep water in the Atlantic to deep water in the Pacific and runs northwest to southeast. It requires about eight hours for an average ship to transit the canal while being lifted step by step to a height of 85 feet through three sets of locks – Gatun, Pedro Miguel and Miraflores.

(1905 - fumigation brigades and fumigation car eradicating the mosquitoes.)

Gatun Lake, through which ships travel for 23 miles from the Atlantic Gatun locks to Gaillard Cut, was at the time of the canal construction the largest man-made lake in the world. It covers an area of more than 163 square miles (425 mk²) and was formed by an earth dam across the Chagres River.

1735 - Navigating the Chagres River.

The Chagres River has played a dual role. First the Panama Railroad was built in the mid-eighties along its bed which was also near the 300-year-old Spanish mule trail starting in Panama and finishing at the Fort San Lorenzo on the Atlantic side. The Panama channel follows the Chagres River bed which now lies far below the waters of Gatun Lake, and if navigating on the lake you see scores of tiny islands, they are actually the tops of former jungle hills. The level of the lake is controlled by use of the 14 gates of Gatun Dam spillway. A hydroelectric plant at the dam provides part of the energy needed by the Panama Canal.

The Gaillard Cut, once called Culebra Cut and renamed for Col. David Gaillard the engineer in charge of this section of the Canal work, is the most interesting part of the trip. This portion of the channel is about nine miles long. It was excavated through rock and shale and the endeavor cost heavily in lives and was one of the many reasons for the Lesseps’ failure. Its width was originally 300 feet but it was widened later to 500 feet. A new widening construction is actually under way.

The locks are given maintenance frequently. If by chance you happen to  visit Miraflores locks at that time it is an impressive sight to see the vast empty chamber and its huge gates being cleaned.

An original feature of the locks is the system of electric locomotives better known as "mules". The mules operate along the lock wall and are used to position vessels properly within the lock chamber and ensure they don’t bump into the side of the chamber. Each mule weighs 55 tons and is equipped with two windlasses (winches used to hoist or haul), each of which can exert 35,000 pounds of pulling strength, plus a special gear which engages a slotted track between the rails with additional traction if necessary. Small vessels may need up to six or eight mules.

Every ship’s captain has to relinquish the responsibility of navigating the vessel through the Canal of Panama Canal pilot. Over 250 pilots move some 14,000 vessels through the Canal each year. Total time spent in Panamanian waters averages about 24 hours. Since its opening in 1914, the canal has been closed only one day, December 20^th, 1989.

The average toll for oceangoing commercial vessels is approximately $25,000 but whatever a vessel pays, it can save up to ten times the toll by eliminating the journey round Cape Horn. The highest toll on record is $141,344.97 paid by the Crown Princess on May 5, 1993. The lowest toll is 36 cents, paid by Richard Halliburton for swimming the Canal in 1928.

Relations between Panama and the U.S. have been troubled since 1904, the year after the Republic was founded. Panama became increasingly resentful of the U.S. in their exercise of legal jurisdiction in perpetuity over the Canal Zone. Under rights granted in the 1903 treaty, the U.S. intervened militarily a number of times to restore order in Panama. This right was renounced in a 1936 accord, which amended the 1903 treaty by eliminating U.S. power to unilaterally extend the Canal Zone, restricting U.S. commercial activities in the Zone which competed with Panama and increasing the amount of the annual payment for the rights granted in the original treaty. The treaty was revised again in 1955 to further limit U.S. commercial activities, expand opportunities for Panamanians employed in the Zone and again increase the annuity payment. There were fairly serious anti-U.S. riots in 1959 and on January 9, 1964 following an incident between Americans and Panamanian students, major disturbances erupted in which over twenty Panamanians and four American soldiers died. Panama subsequently broke diplomatic relations with the U.S. Relations were restored after U.S. President Lyndon Johnson declared his government was ready to negotiate an entirely new treaty, which would eliminate the causes of conflict between both countries.

(Bas Obispo1886.  Excavator at work near empire. Averaging 400 cubic yards a day.)

The operation of the locks consumes a prodigious amount of fresh water. Each time a ship passes through the waterway, some 52 million gallons must flow into the locks and out to sea. Most of its comes from Gatun Lake but with the increase of traffic, nearby Madden Lake (or Alajuela Lake) was built, also by damming, in 1936. There are three levels of continuous locks at Gatun on the Atlantic side but on the Pacific side it was necessary to separate the levels. There is only one level change at Pedro Miguel from the 85-foot high Gaillard Cut to 54-foot high Miraflores Lake. Like all Panama Canal locks, chambers are filled and emptied by gravity, water flowing through a series of 18-foot diameter tunnels allowing the filling and emptying of a chamber in 10minutes!

The lock gates, another marvel of engineering, consist of a pair of towering leaves ranging from 47 to 82 feet high. The leaves are each 65 feet wide and seven feet thick with a weight from 400 to over 700 tons. The lower sections of the gates are watertight flotation chambers. Each set of gates can be opened or closed in about two minutes by 40-horsepower electric motors.

There will be three main culverts extending the full length of the locks, one in each of the side walls and one in the middle wall.  The side-wall culverts are 22 feet in diameter from the intake at the south end of the upper locks to a point 320 feet north, where they are reduced to 18 feet, at which diameter they will continue to the end. a distance of about 3,500 feet.  the culvert in the middle wall is 22 feet in diameter from its south end to a point 120 feet north, where it also will be reduced to 18 feet, at which diameter it will continue to the end, a distance of about 3,500 feet.  Lateral culverts in the form of an ellipse will run in the floor from and at right angles to the main culverts at intervals of 32 and 36 feet, leading alternately from the side and middle culverts.   Water will be delivered or collected by each lateral culvert through five openings or wells in the floor.  Valves, which may be opened or closed either individually or all at one time, will be located at the intakes and outlets of the main culverts, and at the connections between the center culverts and the lateral culverts.  In the center space of the middle wall there will be a tunnel, divided into three stories or galleries.   The lowest gallery is for drainage; the middle, for the wires that will carry the electric current to operate the gate and valve machinery, which will be installed in the center wall, and the top, a passageway for the operators.

(U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Gen. Omar Torrijos, Panama's leader, shake hands after signing the Panama Canal Treaty on Sept. 7, 1977). 

A set of draft treaties agreed upon in 1967 evoked major domestic political criticism in the two nations: they were never signed and officially rejected by Panama’s government in 1970. Negotiations were initiated in 1972 and a new treaty’s Head of Government the late Gen. Omar Torrijos on September 7, 1977. It was ratified by U.S. Congress march 1978. Under the terms of this agreement, the U.S. abandoned sovereignty over the Canal Zone and agreed to cede control of the Canal to Panama at the end of the century. The treaty went into effect on October 1^st, 1979.

This treaty also abolished the former Canal organization – The Panama Canal Company and the Canal Company Government – and created the Panama Canal Commission as the agency responsible for the overall management of the waterway until the year 2,000 when the treaty expires. Panama is committed to keep the Canal open and efficient after that date.

The agreements provide full cooperation and participation between both countries. The Commission, a federal agency of the United States until year 2000, is run by a Panamanian administrator and a U.S. deputy administrator while a board of directors of nine members – five U.S. appointed by the President of the United States, and four Panamanians nominated by the Government of Panama – make the management decisions.

The treaty requires that Panamanians participate increasingly at all levels in the canal’s operations in preparation for Panama’s assumption of responsibility for its operation at the end of the year 1999. Under the terms of the treaty, The United States has the right to build a third lane of locks to increase the capacity of the existing Canal. In 1986 a tripartite international organization, the Canal Alternatives Study Commission was established by the United States, Panama and Japan to carry out studies and make recommendations relating to the feasibility of the construction of a sea-level canal or improvements to the present one, including a third set of locks.

In 1994, the Panamanian government approved an addition to the constitution about the Panama Canal which guarantees the independence of its future administration. It also creates the Panama Canal Authority to be the agency that will assume the administration of the canal when it is turned over to Panama. The Canal Authority will have a board of directors of eleven members. It will be its responsibility to name the administrator and the establishment of fees, rights and use of the services rendered by the canal. Similarly, the Canal Authority will pay the Panamanian government sums identical to the received now for tolls.

On October 22, 2006, the Panamanian People approved the widening of the Panama Canal, which will