George Washington Goethals (/ˈɡoʊθəlz/ GOH-thəlz June 29, 1858 – January 21, 1928) was an American military officer and civil engineer, best known for his administration and supervision of the construction and the opening of the Panama Canal.

In April 1876, after three years of college, he won an appointment to the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York and entered there in June.

[4] His routine duties included reconnaissance, surveys, and astronomical work, while his most consequential project was the replacement of a 120-foot bridge across the Spokane River.

[8] His recommendation of a single lock with an unprecedented lift of twenty-six feet was initially opposed by his superiors in Washington, and he was forced to persuade the conservative army engineers of the merits of his design.

The victorious Panamanians gave the United States control of the Panama Canal Zone on February 23, 1904, for $10 million in accordance with the November 18, 1903 Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty.

The US inherited a small workforce and an assortment of buildings, infrastructure and equipment, much of which had been neglected for fifteen years in the humid jungle environment.

He improved drilling and dirt-removal equipment at the Culebra Cut for greater efficiency, revising the inadequate provisions in place for soil disposal.

In November 1906 Roosevelt visited Panama to inspect the canal's progress, the first trip outside the United States by a sitting president.

[13] In February 1907 US President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Colonel George Washington Goethals chief engineer of the Panama Canal.

In April 1917 George W. Goethals was serving at President Woodrow Wilson's request, as General Manager and Director of the Emergency Fleet Corporation— charged with creating improvised ships, to carry the American army and its supplies to France, in the shortest possible time.

Goethals did so only after Secretary of War Newton D. Baker had assured him full authority and that he would not be interfered with, nine days later he was appointed Director of the Storage & Traffic Service.

"[22] The Army's supply chain suffered from three main problems—a shortage of specialized personnel, decentralized organization and diverse uncoordinated functions.

Believing the Army's business could be best organized along civilian lines, he hired military men who could get along with industrialists and built with and around a number of highly trained executives and businessmen (among the new recruits were Hugh S. Johnson and Robert J. Thorne).

[23] The Overman Act, a result of the Congressional investigations started in December 1917, authorized what became known as the "interbureau procurement system," and was to make the Quartermaster Corps the most important War Department purchasing agency.

At a meeting of quartermaster personnel in Washington, on August 8, 1918, Secretary of War Baker said:[22] How fortunate this great army is to have so good and able a provider.

For his World War I service General Goethals, who retired March 1, 1919—and whom General Peyton C. March, the Army Chief of Staff, called "a great engineer, a great soldier, and the greatest Chief of Supply produced by any nation in the World War "—was awarded the Army Distinguished Service Medal; was named Commander of the Legion of Honor by France and Honorary Knight Commander, by Great Britain; and was awarded the British Order of St. Michael & St. George and the Grand Cordon of the Order of Wen Hu by China.

[22] The citation for his Army DSM reads: The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Army Distinguished Service Medal to Major General George Washington Goethals, United States Army, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished services to the Government of the United States, in a duty of great responsibility during World War I, in reorganizing the Quartermaster Department and in organizing and administering the Division of Purchase, Storage, and Traffic during the war.

[4] Goethals, after having been discovered to have terminal lung cancer in September 1927,[31] died at the age of 69, "surrounded by his wife and two sons",[31] at his apartment at 12 East 86th Street in Manhattan, New York City on January 21, 1928.