August 15: Panama Canal Opens for Traffic (1914)
Prayer Idea
Pray for people who work in building, operating, and maintaining canals.
History Note
People have been building canals since ancient times to move water for irrigation and to improve transportation. New canals are still being built.
After European explorers reached the Americas, they began thinking about how to speed up travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It was a difficult and daunting task. However, the discovery of gold in California in 1848 provided a major impetus for making it happen.
Thousands of people wanted to go from the eastern U.S. to California. They had the choice between a difficult journey across the western U.S. territories or a difficult voyage around South America. Both routes were expensive and required months of travel. Another option involved sailing to Panama, making a difficult and dangerous crossing by land, and then sailing to California. In 1850 an American company undertook to build a railroad across Panama. Completed in 1855, it shortened the trip by a few days and was an immediate financial success.
Ferdinand de Lesseps was a French diplomat and promoter whose vision led to the building of the Suez Canal, which connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea by cutting through Egypt. Completed in 1869, the Suez Canal eliminated the need for ships to sail around Africa to reach India and the Far East. Ten years later, De Lesseps turned his attention to Central America and the digging of a canal across Panama. However, this attempt was a disaster because of technical difficulties and financial mismanagement. Work-related accidents and tropical diseases took a heavy toll among the workers. As many as 20,000 people died during the French-directed efforts.
American interest in a Central American canal increased dramatically because of the Spanish-American War in 1898, when matters in the Caribbean became of great concern to Americans. When the war erupted, the battleship Oregon took six weeks to go from California around South America to the Caribbean. Newspapers reported the ship’s progress every day, and this drama convinced most Americans of the need to build a canal.
With tacit support from the U.S. military, people in Panama declared independence from Colombia in 1903 and made a deal with the United States to allow construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The U.S. received a 99-year-lease for a ten-mile-wide strip on which it would build a canal. America pledged to pay Panama $10 million as well as $250,000 a year for the lease.
American-led work in Panama began in 1904. President Theodore Roosevelt paid a brief visit to Panama in 1906, thus becoming the first U.S. president to leave the country while in office.
The American plan involved using and diverting existing waterways as well as building locks that could be closed around ships to raise and lower them as needed along the canal route. As with the earlier French project, the large majority of laborers were black men from the Caribbean who came to Panama seeking jobs. Though improved medical understanding reduced the death toll from disease, about 5,600 workers lost their lives during the ten years that the U.S. oversaw the work.
The Panama Canal was an astounding engineering accomplishment. It opened to the commerce of all nations on August 15, 1914. The trip between New York and San Francisco was cut from 13,932 miles around Cape Horn to 6,059 miles through the canal.
The United States operated the canal peacefully and profitably through times of war and peace. However, the American presence there came to be seen as a vestige of American imperialism. During the tenure of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. Senate ratified treaties that gave legal control of the canal to Panama in the year 2000 and permanently guaranteed the canal’s neutrality.
These overhead and cross-section views of the Panama Canal are from William R. Shepherd’s Historical Atlas, published in 1911.
Learn More
This video provides an overview of the construction of the Panama Canal.
Find more resources at Homeschool History.
