Panama Canal Museum

Dedicated to the united states role in the history of Panama

Digging in Hell’s Gorge

Hell's Gorge


Railroad Tracks ©Culebra Cut was known as “Hell’s Gorge,” with its heat and dust and noise. As with the French, landslides continued to plague work in the Cut. Overnight railroad tracks and trestles collapsed, stopping all progress until they were rebuilt. Even the homes, built for construction workers at the Cut, fell victim to the slides and had to be torn down or moved further away. Flooding in the rainy season caused equipment to be submerged. Like the French before him, Chief Engineer Lt. Colonel Goethals ordered diversion channels cut parallel to the Cut. One channel ran for 5-1/2 miles at a minimum width of 5 feet. Unfortunately the channels were dug too close to the Cut and water from them seeped in from below and caused several more landslides. In one place the landslide kept pace with the shovel digging it out. Crews were kept busy replacing hundreds of miles of buried and twisted track. In one instance, when Lt. Colonel Gaillard asked Goethals what they should do after a slide buried several months of work, he replied dryly, “Hell, dig it out again.”

Dynamite Workers ©West Indian laborers loaded dynamite into holes in the Cut. This was one of the most dangerous jobs because of the danger of landslides and because handling dynamite was unsafe. Accidents also happened when shovels hit a cap of an unexploded charge. One time, a 12-ton charge went off when hit by lightning. In June 1907, Dr. William Gorgas noted, “We are having too many accidents with blasts.” The worst single disaster happened on December 12, 1908, when 22 tons of dynamite exploded as the last charge was being tamped. Twenty-three men were killed, and forty injured.

Dirt for Dam ©About 200 trainloads of spoil (dirt) a day were removed and carried to dumps from one to twenty-three miles away. The dumps were carefully managed by a yardmaster who expedited the arrival and departure of each train. The dirt and rocks were used to fill in low lying areas in the Canal Zone, to build the foundation of what would become new towns like Balboa on the Pacific side near Panama City. It was used to build Gatun Dam and a breakwater on the Atlantic side. Some of it was just dumped in the jungle, covering as much as a thousand acres which in the rainy season became huge seas of mud.

Two Steam Shovels ©On May 10, 1913, two steam shovels met nose to nose in the bottom of the Cut. The work was nearly done. The shovels in the Cut had set records. The accounts of their productivity in the Canal Record were read as avidly as baseball scores. They peaked in March 1909, when 2,000,000 cubic yards were removed. This was 10 times the volume removed by the French in their best month. The volume of earth removed totaled 100,000,000 cubic yards. In all, nine miles of dirt was removed from the Cut.

Gaillard PlaqueDavid DuBose Gaillard did not live to see the opening of the Panama Canal. Diagnosed with a brain tumor, he died in December 1913.
This plaque was dedicated to him for his work in supervising the monumental task of excavating Culebra Cut. On April 27, 1915, Culebra Cut was renamed “Gaillard Cut” in recognition of his accomplishments.