History of the Panama Canal

The Central division, overseen by Major David du Bose Gaillard, was responsible for the most daunting task, the excavation of the Culebra Cut through the roughest terrain on the route.

Protective of their newly gained independence and fearing domination by the more powerful United States, president Simón Bolívar and New Granada officials declined American offers.

A diplomatic crisis between the British and the United States was averted by the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty (1850), in which the two nations bound each other to joint control of any canal built in Nicaragua or (by implication) anywhere in Central America.

This route with an overland leg in Panama was soon frequently traveled, as it provided one of the fastest connections between San Francisco, California, and the East Coast cities, about 40 days' transit in total.

In 1855, William Kennish, a Manx-born engineer working for the United States government, surveyed the isthmus and issued a report on a route for a proposed Panama Canal.

The canal soon proved its value to international trade in making a direct sea-level connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean, avoiding the need to sail around Africa.

He was encouraged by influential members of French society, who considered that another great engineering success would help restore public confidence in France, badly dented by its humiliation in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).

Godin de Lépinay's plan was to build a dam across the Chagres River in Gatún, near the Atlantic, and another on the Rio Grande, near the Pacific, to create an artificial lake accessed by locks.

Digging less and avoiding unsanitary work and the danger of flooding was his priority, with an estimated lower cost of $100,000,000 (equivalent to $3,157,241,379 in 2023) and 50,000 lives saved, as mentioned in the motivation for his negative review of de Lesseps' plan.

[33][29] The American delegation, headed by Aniceto García Menocal, presented its plan to build a lock canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific channels through Lake Nicaragua.

The dense jungle was alive with venomous snakes, insects, and spiders, but the worst challenges were yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical diseases, which killed thousands of workers; by 1884, the death rate was over 200 per month.

The battleship was ordered in March 1898 to proceed from its base on the west coast of the U.S. to join the North Atlantic Squadron and made an epic 14,000 nmi (26,000 km) voyage around the tip of South America to do so.

The Colombian dispatched 500 members of the Tiradores Battalion to Colón on the Caribbean Sea coast, traveling aboard the cruiser Cartagena and merchant ship Alexander Bixio.

However, Amador's wife María de la Ossa produced a plan to separate the Colombian generals from their troops with the aid of sympathetic management from the Panama Railroad.

The Colombian gunboat Bogotá fired shells upon Panama City the night of November 3, causing injuries and mortally wounding Mr. Wong Kong Yee of Hong Sang, China.

[97] The US maneuvers are often cited as the classic example of US gunboat diplomacy in Latin America, and the best illustration of what Roosevelt meant by the old African adage, "Speak softly and carry a big stick [and] you will go far."

"The notion that Roosevelt would abandon Panama at this point, that he would leave the junta to the vengeance of Colombia, that he would now suddenly turn around and treat with Bogota, was not simply without foundation, but ridiculous to anyone the least familiar with the man or the prevailing temper in Washington.

Overwhelmed by the disease-plagued country and forced to use often dilapidated French infrastructure and equipment,[109] as well as being frustrated by the overly bureaucratic ICC, chief engineer Wallace resigned abruptly in June 1905.

Stevens was not a member of the ICC; he increasingly viewed its bureaucracy as a serious hindrance, bypassing the commission and sending requests and demands directly to the Roosevelt administration in Washington, DC.

One of Stevens' first achievements in Panama was in building and rebuilding the housing, cafeterias, hotels, water systems, repair shops, warehouses, and other infrastructure needed by the thousands of incoming workers.

[114] His approach was based on the work of Cuban epidemiologist Carlos Finlay and American pathologist Walter Reed, which had shown that yellow fever was spread by the vector mosquito Aedes aegypti.

[115] The research of Scottish physician Sir Ronald Ross had similarly shown that malaria was spread by the Anopheles mosquito, contrary to traditional ideas that it resulted from noxious vapors.

[123] The Central Division, under Major David du Bose Gaillard of the United States Army Corps of Engineers, was assigned one of the most difficult parts: excavating the Culebra Cut through the continental divide to connect Gatun Lake to the Pacific Panama Canal locks.

Clubhouses were built, managed by the YMCA, with billiard, assembly and reading rooms, bowling alleys, darkrooms for camera clubs, gymnastic equipment, ice cream parlors, soda fountains and a circulating library.

The Atlantic Division, under Major William L. Sibert, was responsible for construction of the breakwater at the entrance to Bahía Limón, the Gatún locks and their 5.6 km (3.5 mi) approach channel, and the Gatun Dam.

Dry excavation ended on September 10, 1913; a January slide had added 1,500,000 m3 (2,000,000 cu yd) of earth, but it was decided that this loose material would be removed by dredging when the cut was flooded.

These were joined by enormous steam-powered cranes, giant hydraulic rock crushers, concrete mixers, dredges, and pneumatic power drills, nearly all of which were manufactured by new, extensive machine-building technology developed and built in the United States.

On January 7, 1914, the Alexandre La Valley (a floating crane built by Lobnitz & Company and launched in 1887) became the first ship to make a complete transit of the Panama Canal under its own steam after working its way across during the final stages of construction.

[161][162] Before this handover, the government of Panama held an international bid to negotiate a 25-year contract for operation of the container shipping ports located at the canal's Atlantic and Pacific outlets.

On the same day, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), made up of ten Central and South American countries, denounced Trump's comments and affirmed its support for Panama's "sovereignty, territorial integrity and self-determination.