Panama Canal & Gatun Lake

The Panama Canal and Gatun Lake

50 miles or 80 kilometers wide is the narrowest point of the isthmus of Panama and the entire American continent have been characterized by mountains of over 600 meters, one of the most impenetrable jungle, torrential rains, relentless sun, a moisture due to evaporation of torrential rain and relentless sun and some of the most complex geological formations in the world.

The construction of a canal across Panama had challenged and defeated the expertise of one of the great powers of the earth, France. Moreover, neither French engineers, nor the efforts of U.S. military engineers were able to control the devastating floods of the Chagres River, to create the current Madden Dam in the 1930s.

With the discovery of the South Sea in 1513 by Basque Núñez de Balboa started the dream of digging a water passage across the Isthmus of Panama. King Charles ordered a study on a water route from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans along the Chagres River. In 1534 this was the first study of a proposed ship canal through Panama, and more or less was the one that was used by France and the United States in building the Panama Canal.

The discovery in 1848 of gold in California caused a massive migration of people traveling across the Isthmus. The vehicles were scarce and development follows a mule, the extensive bush walking across the road crossings and small wooden bongos. After the railroad in 1855 Panama City was one of the most important cities throughout Central and South America during the next two decades. When the railway comes into operation the U.S. interests in the construction of a channel increases.

In the years 1870 - 1875, establishing a Panama Canal Commission appointed by President Ulysses Grant and divided as follows: The studies were conducted in Tehuantepec, Mexico, by Captain Robert W. Shufeldt, in Darien, led by Commander Thomas Oliver Selfridge, in Nicaragua, led by Commander Chester Hatfield, Commander Edward P. Lull and Civil Engineer in Chief Aniceto G. Menocal, and Panama, along the railway line, by Lull and Menocal.

To evaluate the results of the expeditions of the Navy. A report was prepared by the Commission in 1876, favoring the Nicaragua route. After the assassination of President McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt became the ninth U.S. president. Theodore Roosevelt was interested in building a canal was practical, vital and indispensable to the fate of U.S. hegemony.

On February 15, 1898 at a naval base in Cuba, the battleship Maine was blown up and as a result some 260 victims perished. The battleship Oregon anchored in San Francisco was ordered to sail to the place in fact some 12,000 miles in order to restore order. The Battle of Santiago Bay was resolved in 67 days, when the ship finally arrived in front of La Florida, a fact which demonstrated the importance of a canal in Central America.

Roosevelt supported the independence movement in Panama by sending warships on both sides of the Isthmus, The Atlanta battleships, Maine II, Mayflower and Prairie Bay City of Columbus and Boston, Marblehead, Concord and Wyoming in Bay of Panama City, blocking the progress of arming Colombia.

The Marines and soldiers troops among civilians of the Chiquita Brands Company were moved to defend the separation of Panama from Colombia.

Theodore Roosevelt later ridicule in the United States Congress "... I took the Isthmus, started the canal and then I let debatirera Congress on the channel”. On 3 November 1903, Panama declared its independence from Colombia and signed a treaty "Hay - Bune rod, which gives the U.S. a concession for the construction of the Canal in perpetuity. The founders of Panama had no choice but to accept the Treaty. The United States had finally achieved the control you need to begin the colossal task of construction of the canal.

The U.S. canal construction began on May 4, 1904 the Army Corps commanded by Lieutenant Mark Brooke at a ceremony received the keys to the stores in France and the Ancon Hospital. Dr. William Crawford Gorgas and his team were among the first to arrive in Panama, which had been known for centuries as the "Coast fever" because of illness and fever that were supposedly caused by "malaria mists" derived marsh. However, some medical researchers were becoming aware that the fog was a cloud of mosquitoes that were the cause of death and gave the disease called malaria and yellow fever.

In 1905 John F. Stevens, with full support to the campaign of Gorgas, yellow fever was eradicated, the last case reported in the city of Panama was the November 11, 1905.

Thanks to the elimination of all mosquito breeding places of the size of the labor force has tripled in six months under plans Gorgas and Stevens, many communities had to move to places aseptic.

For the construction of the Panama Canal, the railroad was extended to support additional population created by the growing labor force of the Canal. Several lines were moved by floods and landslides. The team left by the French was replaced by a more resilient. A system Purification Water and sewer is created, developed new buildings and the streets are paved.

The construction employed a workforce of 24,000 men. Stevens also developed the excavation of the canal system of invention. He also devised an ingenious rail complex at different levels within the Culebra Cut. Col. Goethals would say, "Stevens conceived, designed, and had almost all contingencies relating to construction and subsequent operation of the project ... So, for him, much to me, belongs the honor of being the true "genius of the construction of the Panama Canal"

Water was the key factor throughout the engineering of the Panama Canal. Water vessels up to 85 feet above sea level to the surface of Lake Gatun, then get off again in the opposite ocean. Used to generate electricity for the Canal and Panama City. The locks of the Pacific were the first to be completed, followed by Pedro Miguel and Miraflores in 1911 in May 1913.

On May 20, 1913, the steam shovels No. 222 and No. 230, which had been gradually reducing the difference in the Cut, and that is how the Culebra Cut had reached its total depth of 40 meters above the sea level. June 27 is closed the last of the gates of the spillway of the Gatun Dam, allowing the lake filled to its maximum level. The dry excavation ended three months later. In January 1913, when a landslide back Cucaracha 2,000,000 cubic yards of earth to the Court, the Court decided to flood and dredging waste. The last steam shovel up the last rock in the Court on the morning of September 10, 1913, which was taken from the Court on the last train of waste hauled by the locomotive No.260.

The tug Gatun, assigned to the entrance of the Channel in the Atlantic to tow barges, had the honor, on September 26, 1913, to conduct the first test of a lockage through the Gatun Locks. Additional tests were those of the anti seismic seismograph needles calls following the earthquake of September 30, 1913. There were landslides throughout the country, cracked walls in some buildings in the city of Panama, but no damage to the Panama Canal. That same week, six major pipelines in the earth dam at Gamboa flooded the Culebra Cut. On October 10, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button from Washington and transmitted by telegraph from Washington to New York to Galveston to Panama gave the command signal to operate the dam to complete the flood in the Court and join it to the Lake Gatun. On November 17, 1913 the USS Ancon Steam was the first to sail the entire canal from one ocean to another.

Were approximately $ 387,000,000 including $ 10,000,000 paid to Panama and $ 40,000,000 paid to the French and an extra $ 12,000,000 for the fortifications of the Panama Canal. One of the most expensive construction project in U.S. history. Surprisingly, construction costs were lower by $ 23,000,000 less than the estimates of 1907, despite the novelty of science, the movement and landslides and a design change to a wider channel. More than 30,000 people died in the canal and more than 80,000 people participated in the construction. Among the construction by the French and the Americans totaled approximately $ 639,000,000. After more than 90 years of service, the concrete of the Panama Canal Locks and Dams is in almost perfect condition, one of its most exceptional.

David McCullough, author of "The Road Between the Seas", wrote: "The creation of a water passage across Panama was one of the supreme human achievements of all time, the culmination of a heroic dream of over four years and more than twenty years of extraordinary effort and sacrifice. The fifty-mile strip between the oceans are among the most solid geological plates, effort and human ingenuity, there are no statistics on tonnage which was removed stone, gravel and land. Primarily the canal is an expression of that ancient and noble desire to bridge the gap, to bring people together. It is a work of civilization. "

Theodore Roosevelt is known for building the Panama Canal, and was never challenged this assertion. However, the three presidents whose terms coincided with the construction of the Canal - Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson Howard - was William Howard Taft, who manages a large share in the period of government. Goethals, wrote in his memoirs, "was the real builder of the Panama Canal, Theodore Roosevelt." Shown in the Administration Building of the Panama Canal a plaque engraved with the words:

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotions, who spends a good cause who, at best, knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and, at worst, if he fails, at least not while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those souls cold and timid who knew neither victory nor defeat". 

Theodore Roosevel