Grade 6 · History
Building the Panama Canal
Side view of the canal, not to scale. Left: sea labeled "Atlantic Ocean." A ship climbs three water steps labeled "locks" to flat water labeled "Gatun Lake: 85 feet above sea level," which runs between hills through a channel labeled "Culebra Cut." Right: three steps labeled "locks" go down to sea labeled "Pacific Ocean."
For hundreds of years, ships sailing between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had to go all the way around the tip of South America. A canal across Panama would need to be only about fifty miles long, so it looked like the perfect shortcut. France tried first, in 1881. Its plan was to dig a channel straight across at sea level.
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