Building the Panama Canal

The first people to try were from France.

They started digging in 1881. But many workers got very sick, the hills kept sliding down, and the money ran out. In 1889 they had to stop.

The first attempt was led by Ferdinand de Lesseps, a Frenchman who had already built the Suez Canal in Egypt. In 1879 an international meeting in Paris chose his plan: a canal dug all the way down to sea level, with no locks. Work began in 1881.

It went badly. The French equipment was too light for the job, rain caused floods and landslides, and many workers fell ill with yellow fever and malaria. In 1889 the company ran out of money, and by May 15, 1889, all work in Panama had stopped.

At a congress in Paris in May 1879, de Lesseps secured a vote of 74 to 8 for a sea-level canal from Limón Bay to the Bay of Panama, although engineers such as Godin de Lépinay argued for dams, an artificial lake and locks, the basic elements of today's canal. The Compagnie Universelle began work on March 12, 1881. ASCE describes brutal conditions: rampant yellow fever and malaria, massive landslides and flooding, heat and equipment too light for the job.

At the time, no one knew that mosquitoes carried these diseases, and many workers died of disease and accidents; the ACP notes that the French recorded only deaths that occurred in hospital, so the true toll will never be known. Even de Lesseps finally agreed to consider a lock canal, but shareholders dissolved the company in January 1889, all work stopped by May 15, 1889, and liquidation ended in 1894.

Tiny mosquitoes were making the workers sick.

A doctor named William Gorgas fought the mosquitoes. Workers drained swamps and covered windows with screens. Soon one sickness, yellow fever, was gone.

When the United States took over the work in 1904, one of the first people to arrive was Dr. William Gorgas, the chief sanitary officer. Doctors had recently learned that mosquitoes spread yellow fever and malaria, so Gorgas set out to get rid of the mosquitoes.

Teams put screens on windows and doors, fumigated houses, drained swamps, dug ditches and brought running water to towns so people no longer kept open water containers where mosquitoes could breed. The last case of yellow fever on the isthmus was reported in Panama City on November 11, 1905. Malaria was harder to fight, and the teams kept working to control it for years.

Carlos Finlay had argued in 1881 that a specific mosquito, later named Aedes aegypti, transmitted yellow fever, and later research confirmed the mosquito connection. Gorgas's early requests met resistance until John F. Stevens, chief engineer from 1905, gave him full support. Against yellow fever, teams screened windows and doors, fumigated houses in Panama City and Colón, oiled cisterns and cesspools and, most importantly, piped running water to the towns; the last case was reported on November 11, 1905.

Malaria, carried by Anopheles mosquitoes that breed almost everywhere, was harder. Gorgas stressed that it was more dangerous than yellow fever, and it had taken the most lives during the French years. Sanitation teams cleared vegetation around homes and workplaces, drained more than 100 square miles of swamp, dug hundreds of miles of ditches and released minnows to eat mosquito larvae.

The hardest part was digging through a long row of hills.

Workers used explosives to break the rock. Big steam shovels lifted it into trains. The trains carried it away.

The toughest job was the Culebra Cut, about 13.7 kilometers through the rock of Panama's mountain spine. Workers drilled holes, filled them with explosives and blasted the rock loose. Then steam shovels loaded it onto railroad cars that carried it away.

John F. Stevens, the chief engineer from 1905 to 1907, designed a clever system of railroad tracks at different levels so the trains could keep up with the shovels. Landslides were a constant danger: in 1907, a slide at Cucaracha poured about 500,000 cubic yards of earth back into the cut.

The Culebra Cut, the narrowest part of the canal, runs about 13.7 km from Pedro Miguel Locks to Gatun Lake through rock and limestone of the Cordillera Central. Holes were drilled, packed with explosives and detonated; steam shovels, much more powerful than the French ones, loaded spoil onto trains, and Stevens's multi-level track system kept trains and shovels working together. More than a hundred million cubic yards of spoil had to be hauled away; some of it reclaimed nearly 500 acres from the Pacific for the Balboa townsite.

Slides were relentless. The first big one of the American period, at Cucaracha on October 4, 1907, moved some 500,000 cubic yards into the cut after heavy rain. By July 1, 1914, Americans had excavated 238,845,587 cubic yards; with the French total, about 268 million cubic yards, more than four times the volume estimated for de Lesseps' sea-level canal.

The builders made a big lake in the middle of Panama.

Ships climb up to the lake using locks, like giant water steps. Then they go down the locks on the other side.

Instead of digging down to sea level, the Americans decided to build a lock canal, an idea Stevens persuaded President Theodore Roosevelt to accept. A huge dam at Gatun held back the Chagres River and made Gatun Lake, 26 meters above the sea. When it was built, it was the largest human-made lake in the world.

Locks work like water elevators. A ship sails into a chamber, the gates close, and water flows in from the lake to lift it up, step by step. On the other side, other locks let the water out to lower the ship back to the sea. The water flows down from the lake by gravity.

Stevens convinced Roosevelt and Congress that a lock canal was wiser than a sea-level one, partly because he had seen the Chagres in flood. Gatun Dam was, when built, the largest earthen dam in the world, and Gatun Lake the largest human-made body of water. Three sets of locks, Gatún on the Atlantic side and Pedro Miguel and Miraflores on the Pacific, lift ships 26 m (85 feet) to the lake and lower them again; water from Gatun Lake fills the chambers by gravity.

The chambers are 33.53 m wide and 304.8 m long. Concrete work began at Gatun on August 24, 1909, and all the locks took four years to build; the ACP says the concrete was still in near-perfect condition after more than 80 years. The steel miter gates, which close in a wide V, are 64 feet wide and 7 feet thick, and their hollow lower halves float, easing the load on their hinges.

In 1914 the canal opened. A ship called the Ancon sailed through from one ocean to the other.

Today Panama runs the canal. New, bigger locks opened in 2016 for giant ships.

Tens of thousands of people worked on the canal; in August 1913 the workforce reached 39,962. Many came from other countries, including Barbados, Guadeloupe, Spain, Italy and Greece. On August 15, 1914, the steamship Ancon made the first official crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

The United States ran the canal for most of the 20th century. Under a treaty agreed in 1977, it passed fully to Panama on December 31, 1999. In 2016, new, larger locks opened so that much bigger ships could use the canal.

The workforce peaked at 39,962 in August 1913, and contract laborers were recruited from the Caribbean and Europe, including Barbados, Guadeloupe, Spain, Italy and Greece. Many died of disease and accidents during construction; the ACP cautions that the full toll will never be known. The first complete passage by an oceangoing vessel, the old French crane boat Alexandre La Valley, came on January 7, 1914, and the SS Ancon made the official opening transit on August 15, 1914; the ACP notes the final cost came in below the 1907 estimate.

Panama declared independence from Colombia in 1903 with US backing, and a treaty gave the United States a Canal Zone 10 miles wide. After the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaty, the canal passed fully to Panama on December 31, 1999, and is run by the Panama Canal Authority. Its expansion (2009 to 2016) added the Agua Clara and Cocolí locks, 427 m long and 55 m wide, opened on June 26, 2016.