Also, when it rained, the dirt would turn to puddles, which attracted mosquitos, which meant malaria rips through your workforce. The French were piling it up, which led to landslides. Noel Maurer: A key thing the US did, was they used railroads to truck out the dirt. When it rained, the dirt would turn to puddles, which attracted mosquitos, which meant malaria rips through your workforce. The systems of locks is what made it possible. It was lower on one side than on the other side, with mountains in between. The way the terrain is, a sea-level canal would flood, it was prone to landslides and the terrain was not stable enough. The American ingenuity was of building, rather than a sea level canal, a lock canal. The French attempted to do this and failed. Orlando Pérez: The idea of an interoceanic canal dates back to the Spanish colonial period. It was 40 miles long and literally cut through the continental divide, so it was extremely difficult. The engineering, technical, medical, and scientific challenges were incredible, first having to get disease under control and then figure out whether it should be a sea-level or a lock canal. Julie Greene: It was in incredible project, the largest public construction project in US history. Photo by Getty Images PBS NewsHour: What did it take to get the Panama Canal built? What was the cost of this project? The SS Ancon, the first Ship to pass through the Panama Canal on August 15, 1914. He is the author of Political Culture in Panama: Democracy after Invasion, and a member of the Scientific Support Group for the Latin American Public Opinion Project at Vanderbilt University. Orlando Pérez is Associate Dean, School of Humanities & Social Sciences at Millersville University in Pennsylvania. Noel Maurer is an associate professor of business administration at Harvard University, and the author of The Big Ditch: How America Took, Built, Ran, and Ultimately Gave Away the Panama Canal. She is the author of The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal, and serves as President of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Julie Greene is a professor of History at the University of Maryland, specializing in United States labor and working-class history, and co-directs the University’s Center for the History of the New America. He served as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of the National Security Council’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. Richard Feinberg is a professor of International Political Economy at the University of California, San Diego, and a nonresident Senior Fellow with the Latin America Initiative of the Bookings Institution. Morgan, Teddy Roosevelt, and the Panama Canal. He is the author of How Wall Street Created a Nation: J.P. Ovidio Diaz-Espino grew up in Panama and trained as a lawyer. PBS NewsHour recently interviewed several regional experts to discuss the canal’s first 100 years, and to get a sense of what’s ahead. Work recently began on a substantial expansion effort that will allow the canal to accommodate modern cargo needs. Considered one of the wonders of the modern world, the Panama Canal opened for business 100 years ago this Friday, linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and providing a new route for international trade and military transport.Īt the time it was built, the canal was an engineering marvel, relying on a series of locks that lift ships – and their thousands of pounds of cargo – above mountains.īut thousands of workers died during its construction, and its history has seen no shortage of controversy, including a contentious transference of authority from the US to Panama in the 1970s.
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