http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/panama-100-years-later
Begin with one of the most famous (to some, infamous) quotations from a generation ago: California Republican Senator S. I. Hayakawa (served 1977-83) said during the election preceding the 1977 signing of the Panama Canal Treaty, “We should keep the Panama Canal. After all, we stole it fair and square.” Yet in 1978 the senator would help shepherd the treaty through the Senate and win ratification.
A trip I recently took to Panama entailed becoming a member of the trip sponsor, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, whose namesake began building the Canal pursuant to the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty of November 18, 1903, 15 days after, with U.S. backing, Panama declared its independence from what had been Gran Colombia. The U.S. set up the Canal Zone as a separate entity, governed under Delaware law, with a U.S. governor. The September 7, 1977 Panama Canal treaty, which came into effect October 1, 1979, provided for transfer of full control to Panama on December 31, 1999. Spurred by pressures arising out of the shooting of demonstrating student-nationalists by U.S. soldiers – at the behest of an addled garrison commander – in 1964, the treaty negotiated between the Carter administration and Panama’s dictator, Omar Torrijos-Herrera, proved a rare foreign policy triumph for Carter.
Early plans to build a canal date back to the 16th century. It was after crossing the Panama isthmus that Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1513. The one major failed attempt was a 15-year late-19th century effort by Suez Canal architect Ferdinand de Lesseps. His Suez success did not face the significant variations in terrain elevation that made Panama unsuitable for a pure sea-level canal.
It was the brilliant American engineer John Frank Stevens who saw that a sea-level canal would not work; he devised the locks system. Stevens resigned in 1907, and passed the torch to David DuBose Gaillard, who saw the project to completion, under the overall supervision of George Washington Goethals. In November 1906 Theodore Roosevelt visited Panama (and Puerto Rico), becoming the first president to travel abroad on official diplomatic business.
The Canal’s 27,609-person death toll combines an estimated 22,000 for the failed French effort plus 5,609 for the decade-long American effort. Most of the difference was disease; when William Crawford Gorgas directed the effort to conquer yellow fever, thousands of lives were saved. Nearly 40,000 workers toiled to build the Canal, mostly West Indians; the workers on the French and American efforts moved 268 million cubic yards of dirt – more than 25 times that for the (English) Channel Tunnel. The project cost the U.S. a total of $375 million ($9.5 billion in 2012 dollars, reflecting a 25-fold depreciation of the greenback); the cost was a record for an infrastructure project up to that time.
The Panama Canal locks transit system consists of six locks, depicted here (place cursor over locks for video simulation), the first starting and the last ending at sea level. On the Pacific side there are three locks, two Miraflores, one Pedro Miguel, rising a total of 26 meters (85 feet) to the artificial Lake Gatun; the three Gatun locks on the north side lower the ships to the Atlantic side. Lake Gatun, at about 20 miles, is the largest share of the 50-miles transit, followed by the roughly 9-mile Culebra Cut (also known from 1915 through 1999 as the Gaillard Cut, after the engineer who directed its creation). When Panama took possession of the Canal it revived the original name, which had been used from 1903 to 1914. Initially 92 meters (302 feet) wide, the Cut has been expanded twice, and now is 192 meters (630 feet) in straightaway sections and 222 meters (728 feet) on curved sections. Alongside the Canal is the Chagres River, which is the only river running across the entire isthmus.
Our passage was blessed by a mostly sunny Saturday. We began on the Pacific Ocean side, which, as the Canal isthmus runs east-west, is on the south end, at a colorful place named Flamenca Island [sic]; the north side, at the Atlantic (actually, the Caribbean) end, reaches the port of Colon. Thus in 16th century parlance the Pacific was the Southern Sea (and the Atlantic the Northern Sea). Both ports rest at sea level; the Pacific tide runs 21 feet daily, whereas the Caribbean-Atlantic Ocean side runs a mini-tide of only 1-1/2 feet. All gates for locks on the Pacific side are higher, to allow for tidal flow. The existing gates have functioned for a full century, operating purely on gravity to move water in and out of the lock chambers. The gates on the Pacific side weigh 700 tons each.
We boarded our vessel, the Pacific Queen, at 7 a.m. By 7:15 we had passed under the Bridge of the Americas, rising 100 meters above sea level; across it runs the Pan-American Highway, which goes from Chile, with one gap, 30,000 miles all the way (not as the crow flies) to Alaska. Traversing the three locks on the Pacific side, we reached the midway point, Centennial Bridge, around 11 a.m.; the bridge spans Gold Hill to Contractor’s Hill. Gold Hill was named to help create a stock market commodity price bubble; a predictable frenzy ensued, as investors piled in only to be outmaneuvered by insiders. We see on the east bank a huge red and white construction crane, and are told that it had been used by billionaire magnate Howard Hughes to lift his monster Spruce Goose seaplane out of the water after its only flight, in 1947.
