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Panama Canal

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The Panama Canal begun as a project by the French. Led Count Ferdinand de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal in Egypt, the construction team broke ground on a planned sea-level canal in 1880.  Because of  incessant rains that caused heavy landslides, there was no effective means for combating the spread of yellow fever and malaria and eventually in 1888 funding was pulled from the project

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Under Theodore Roosevelt the U.S. purchased the French assets in the canal zone for $40 million in 1902. However getting panama from Colombia was no easy task.

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When a proposed treaty over rights to build in what was then a Colombian territory was rejected, the U.S. threw its military weight behind a Panamanian independence movement, eventually negotiating a deal with the new government in 1903 that gave them rights in perpetuity to the canal zone.

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On May 4th chief engineer John Wallace officially started the canals construction.

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At the very beginning of construction many problems arose. The French equipment was in need of major repair. The spread of disease was limiting people who would work on the project. The design the French had originally planned was flawed. And finally the chief engineer quit.

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As the spread of Malaria was so detrimental to the project, chief sanitary officer Dr. William Gorgas, set out to find a cure. After years of research he found the cause of the horrible disease was mosquitoes. In order to get the issue under control he created teams to go out and clean the area of stagnant pools of water and began fumigating homes. Due to his discovery he was able to decrease the numbers of death due to malaria and spread the construction process of the canal by enticing in new workforces.

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A railroad specialist named John Stevens took over as chief engineer in July 1905 and immediately addressed the workforce issues by recruiting West Indian laborers. Stevens ordered new equipment and devised efficient methods to speed up work, such as the use of a swinging boom to lift chunks of railroad track and adjust the train route for carting away excavated material. He also quickly recognized the difficulties posed by landslides and convinced Roosevelt that a lock canal was best for the terrain.

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November 1906, the project suffered a setback when Stevens suddenly resigned a few months later. Incensed, Roosevelt named Army Corps engineer Lt. Col. George Washington Goethals the new chief engineer, granting him authority over virtually all administrative matters in the building zone. He improved working conditions by increasing salaries and providing more adequate housing facilities.

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The Panama Canal officially opened on August 15, 1914, although the planned grand ceremony was downgraded due to the outbreak of WWI. Completed at a cost of more than $350 million, it was the most expensive construction project in U.S. history to that point. Altogether, some 3.4 million cubic meters of concrete went into building the locks, and nearly 240 million cubic yards of rock and dirt were excavated during the American construction phase. Of the 56,000 workers employed between 1904 and 1913, roughly 5,600 were reported killed.