Building the Panama Canal was one of the greatest civil engineering projects of all time, but how much do you know about the history of this waterway that joins two oceans? The building caused thousands of deaths and cost an enormous amount of money, but it has bestowed priceless benefits to world trade and prosperity. Before the Panama Canal existed, traveling from New York City to San Francisco involved a 13,000-mile sea voyage around Cape Horn, but the waterway dramatically cut that journey down to 5,200 miles (8,369 km).
Read on to learn about the blood, sweat, and tears that went into the building of the magnificent Panama Canal.
Related: 10 Facts about America’s Forgotten Invasion of Mexico
10 First Europeans
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It was in 1501 that Spanish explorers first landed on the Caribbean coast of the Panama Isthmus, but the territory was far from unoccupied back then. Migratory hunters traveling there from the north were likely the first to populate the land in prehistoric times. By the time the Spaniards arrived, various tribes, including the Chibchan, Chocoan, and Cueva peoples, lived there.
The first European to land in Panama in 1501 was Rodrigo de Galván Bastidas, and he was followed by Christopher Columbus the next year. Then, in 1509, King Fernando V of Spain handed out concessions for the settlement of Panama. However, early attempts at colonization were thwarted by shipwreck, illness, and hostility from the indigenous population. Another Spaniard, Vasco Núñez de Balboa, had greater success in 1511, establishing the first stable colony in what is now Panama.[1]
9 A Remarkable Discovery
Balboa’s greatest contribution to Panama’s future came in 1513 when he was prospecting for gold. His party reached the Pacific coast, proving that Panama was bound by the Atlantic Ocean’s Caribbean Sea on one coast and the Pacific on the other. Balboa’s remarkable discovery did not save him from an accusation of treason by a Spanish rival, resulting in the explorer’s trial beheading in 1519.
But now the Spanish knew Panama was a thin strip of land between the two great oceans. In 1534, the Spanish King Charles I (who was also Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor) ordered the governor of Panama to investigate the possibility of a waterway running between the territory’s coasts. It was an obvious idea since traveling from the Atlantic to the Pacific involved sailing around the southern tip of South America, a notoriously dangerous and extremely long journey.[2]
8 Crossing Panama
The Spanish plan proposed a channel crossing Panama via the Chagres River, remarkably close to the actual route the Panama Canal would eventually follow. However, the Panamanian governor told Charles that it would be quite impossible to construct a waterway joining the two oceans, which was undoubtedly true back in the 16th century.
Three centuries later in the mid-19th century, the U.S. began to think seriously about a canal joining the Atlantic and the Pacific. This interest was sparked by the great Californian gold rush in 1848. To travel from the East Coast of the U.S., you could sail south to Chagres on Panama’s Caribbean coast and trek cross-country to the Pacific coast before embarking on a second sea journey from Panama City north up the coast of the Americas to California.
This voyage involved a trip of some 6,000 miles (9,656 km) over 35 days. The overland section included malaria, yellow fever, and bandits. Alternatively, you could take a 13,000-mile (20,921-km) sea voyage around Cape Horn, taking as long as eight months. Hardly an attractive option.[3]
7 First, a Railroad
But at this point, the Americans didn’t try to build a waterway across Panama. Instead, they set about constructing a railroad, with work starting in 1850 and the first train crossing the isthmus in 1855. In fact, the French, rather than the Americans, would make the first concerted effort to build a canal across Panama. The Colombian government, which controlled Panama at the time, awarded a contract to build a canal to the French, who started work on the project in 1880.
Giving the contract to the French made some sense. The renowned Count Ferdinand de Lesseps was the Frenchman who was given command of the project. He’d earned an enviable reputation by overseeing the successful construction of the Suez Canal, which opened in 1869. That 50-mile (80.5-km) long channel runs across Egypt and still connects the Mediterranean to the Red Sea. But it runs across mostly flat desert, a far cry from the mountainous jungle that the Panama Canal builders faced.[4]
6 Intractable Problems
Despite the differences in terrain between Panama and Egypt, De Lesseps decided to use the same system he’d previously succeeded with in Egypt. That meant building a sea-level canal instead of one dependent on locks to cross higher ground. This would turn out to be a poor decision. Nevertheless, work on the French project got underway in 1881 with the now 74-year-old De Lesseps at the helm. However, he actually made only two visits to Panama.
The construction team quickly met a series of intractable problems. Heavy rains caused frequent landslides, effectively undoing days and even weeks of back-breaking excavation work, with much of the labor done by hand. Dysentery, malaria, and yellow fever ravaged the workforce. As the 1880s rolled by, it became increasingly clear that this French attempt to join the two oceans was doomed to fail. Progress was painfully slow, and costs were running out of control.[]
5 French Failure
Inevitably, the French construction attempt collapsed in 1888, but not before some 20,000 workers had lost their lives in this ill-starred venture. De Lesseps, formerly a French hero but now disgraced, was charged with mismanagement, found guilty, and sentenced to jail. But he never served the time and died in 1894, his reputation irrevocably tarnished. Even so, the desire to build this canal remained strong. But it wouldn’t be the French who finished the project. It was time for the Americans to step in.
The first problem the Americans faced was a political one. The American president, Teddy Roosevelt, was keen on the project. In 1902, the U.S. bought the incomplete French site for $40 million. However, the Colombian government, still in control of Panama, refused to allow the Americans to proceed with the canal project. This was resolved by the U.S., which gave military backing to the Panamanian independent movement.[6]
4 Republic of Panama
In 1903, the newly independent Republic of Panama was happy to sign a deal with the U.S., allowing it to take over ownership of the Panama Canal Zone. The deal was sweetened by a $10 million down payment to Panama and an annual sum of $250,000 starting nine years later. An official launch ceremony for the construction of the canal came in May 1904, and John Wallace was named chief engineer.
At first, the Americans seemed doomed to repeat the mistakes of the French, opting as they did to build a sea-level canal just as De Lesseps had. But Wallace soon faced multiple difficulties—disease, lack of equipment, and labor among them—and resigned after just a year in the post. An eminent railroad engineer, John Stevens, stepped into the breach and soon changed the project by electing to build a canal with locks, meaning much less landslide-plagued excavation.[7]
3 500 Lives per Mile
Wallace also solved acute labor shortage problems by recruiting men from the Caribbean islands while his chief sanitary officer, William Crawford Gorgas, made great strides in improving the health of the workforce. He achieved this by recognizing that mosquitoes spread various diseases and organizing measures to combat the insects. This led to dramatic health improvements, particularly in the number of yellow fever cases. However, debilitating malaria continued to be all too common.
But the Americans, with the indispensable help of their West Indian laborers, struggled on through the Panamanian jungles and mountains. Even with the disease at least partially under control, fatalities from work accidents continued at shocking levels. In one particular 1908 accident, 23 died when an excavating machine inadvertently detonated dynamite charges. Ultimately, nearly 6,000 died during the time the Americans were building the canal. In his 2007 book Panama Fever, Matthew Parker estimated that over the years, the Panama Canal cost 500 lives for every mile completed.[8]
2 The Culebra Cut
Without a doubt, the most arduous section of construction was the nine miles that were known as the Culebra Cut. By the time work started in earnest on the Cut, Stevens had left the project, and the new boss was U.S. Army engineer Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals. True to his military background, Goethals introduced strict discipline, quickly quashing strike action by laborers. However, he tempered his harsh regime with genuine improvements to the workers’ conditions.
The Culebra Cut ran through mountains, and Goethals had as many as 6,000 men working on it, with construction continuing on a 24-hour basis. Work there was especially hazardous with the constant threat of landslides and the liberal use of explosives to clear the way. Large sections of land were dynamited, and the resulting spoil was loaded onto railroad cars. The huge amounts of rock and dirt were either dumped in the jungle or used to create new land along the Pacific coast.[9]
1 Completion
Eventually, the grand project of linking the Atlantic to the Pacific was completed in May 1913 when two massive steam shovels met each other in the middle of the Culebra Cut. It would be over a year before the first ships entered the canal in August 1914, 10 years after the Americans had started work. The numbers are astonishing: 185 million cubic meters of rock and dirt dug out; 3.4 million cubic meters of concrete poured to build the locks; and 60 million pounds of dynamite detonated.
The long struggle—34 years counting from when the French first started work—was finally over. By the terms of the 1903 Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty, Panama granted America complete ownership of the Panama Canal Zone, which included the waterway itself and a 10-mile (16-km) wide strip of land along its length. However, Panamanians were never happy about ceding this land to the U.S. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter gave the Panamanians ownership of the canal while reserving the right to operate and manage the waterway.[10]