Panama Canal Museum

History and Construction of the Canal, 1898 - 1914

Main Gallery Exhibit

After President William McKinley ordered a commission to study a canal route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans in 1899, it was concluded that Nicaragua was the best route.

However, after McKinley was assassinated, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became president. Roosevelt favored a canal in Panama, not Nicaragua. While Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt wanted to see the American navy in control of the oceans. The Spanish-American War in 1898 heightened military interest in a canal.

After defeating Spain, the United States acquired both the Philippines and Puerto Rico, giving rise to the need for improved naval access to both the Atlantic and Pacific. In 1901, American officials negotiated the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty with Britain, in which the two countries agreed that the United States alone could build and regulate a canal.

When Panamanians demanded independence from Colombia in 1903, Roosevelt sent American warships to back the revolution. Within 15 days, Panama became a sovereign nation and entered into a treaty with the United States that created the Panama Canal Zone, a section of land 10 miles wide and 51 miles long.

Roosevelt said later, “Panama declared itself independent and wanted to complete the Panama Canal, and opened negotiations with us. I had two courses open. I might have taken the matter under advisement and put it before the Senate, in which case we should have had a number of most able speeches on the subject, and they would have been going on now, and the Panama Canal would be in the dim future yet. We would have had a half a century of discussion afterward.”

Then early in 1904, the United States bought out the French company’s rights to build a canal, property, and equipment.

Panama was chosen as the place to build the canal because
•  it had plenty of water, unlike Nicaragua
•  it did not have volcanoes
•  it is the narrowest point on both the North and South American continents

Building the canal, its locks, and dams took ten years between1904 to 1914. More than 65,000 workers arrived from all over the world to work on it, but most of the workers were unskilled laborers from the West Indies.

Roosevelt appointed John Wallace as Chief Engineer in charge of building the canal. Although mindful of Teddy Roosevelt’s orders to “make the dirt fly,” Wallace was accustomed to working under “civilized” conditions. Using equipment the French had left behind, Wallace immediately resumed the digging of the canal. He soon found conditions in Panama squalid and riddled with malaria and yellow fever of which he was terrified. In addition, he complained that the Panama Canal Commission had to approve even the smallest decisions through a lengthy process. After a year, afraid for his health and beset by bureaucratic woes, Wallace resigned.

John F. Stevens, one of the most experienced railroad builders in the United States, replaced Wallace as Chief Engineer. A decisive, strong leader, Stevens recognized immediately that even before the workers started this colossal endeavor, their lives must be enhanced with adequate housing, sanitation, recreation and safety. Steven stopped work on the canal in order that all this be done first. In one year 1,250 homes, hospitals, administration buildings and recreation centers were built; and 1.200 buildings which had belonged to the French were renovated. Stevens went further and encouraged the men to bring their wives to the Canal believing that morale would become even stronger.  In due time, the Isthmian Canal Commission, the governing body of the Canal, provided housing, commissaries, mess halls, barracks, hospitals, churches, baseball leagues, club houses, laundries, sewage systems, post offices, a bakery, and a hotel. There were Saturday night dances at the Tivoli Hotel, Sunday band concerts, a YMCA, clubhouses, clubs and fraternal organizations, beaches and sightseeing and all sorts of activities for the employees and their families after the work week.

The Panama Canal could never have been built without the efforts of Col. William Gorgas and his group of mosquito fighters, called the Anopheles Brigades, which included Mary Eugenia Hibbard, her staff of nurses, and the West Indian workers.  Gorgas had learned that yellow fever came from the bite of a mosquito from Dr. Walter Reed with whom he worked in Cuba. Gorgas initiated mosquito control programs to eradicate tropical diseases like yellow fever and malaria that threatened to kill thousands of workers. West Indian worker, James Connell, 95, remembered,

“Well, the saddest experience I have ever had was seeing men walk down into the cut and drop dead from malaria. That’s the saddest experience I ever had.”

Once the mosquito problem was under control and the infrastructure in place, work resumed on canal construction. Then on February 12, 1907, Roosevelt received a letter from an exhausted and discouraged Stevens. Never the diplomat, Stevens complained bitterly that his work was being undermined “by enemies in the rear.” He said he missed his family and needed a rest. Roosevelt was taken back by the tone of Stevens’s letter which he accepted as his resignation.

Roosevelt then appointed Colonel George Washington Goethals as Chairman and Chief Engineer of the Isthmian Canal Commission. As a military officer he would not be able to resign, but at the same time he was up to the task. Goethals would oversee -
1. The completion of the Canal
2. The damming of the powerful Chagres River with the Gatun Dam that created Gatun Lake.
3. The building of the huge concrete locks with steel miter gates.

Goethals served as Chief Engineer until the completion of the Canal in 1914, following which he served as Governor of the Panama Canal Zone until January 17, 1917.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pushed a button that sent a signal via telegraph to blow up the center of the dike that would mingle the Atlantic and Pacific waters.  A few months later, the first complete passage through the canal was completed, followed by the official passage on August 15, 1914.