Panama Canal Course Day 2 final

Panama Canal - Class #2
What we will cover today
The Panama Canal
100 Years of Service to World Commerce
 Engineering Concept of the Panama Canal
 The Leaders of the Great Enterprise
 Battling Disease
 Building the Canal – “Making the Dirt Fly”
 Presidential Visits

Engineering
Concept
“Raise the Water”
The Panama Canal

Chagres River & Continental Divide
Engineering Concept

Engineering Concept
The Continental Divide

Engineering Concept
“Dig Down”
Baron Godin de Lepinay
 There were still those who believed it was
possible to cut down the backbone of the
Continental Divide until the waters of the
oceans could sweep through unhindered to a
depth which even at low tide would carry the
largest steamship afloat.
 The "Dig Down" concept was at the core of
the French plan pursued by De Lesseps.
 This also required that the entire 50 miles
from coast to coast be excavated.
It will fail !!!

Engineering Concept
“Raise the Water”
 Others held that a more feasible plan would be to “Raise the Water”. This
approach would raise the waters in the middle of Panama to an elevation as high
as 85 above sea level. Ships would be lifted to this height using locks.
 The "Raise the Water" plan meant they only had to dig about one-fifth of the way,
10 miles or so.
 The eventual success of the effort is directly attributable to this bold gamble of
engineering genius.

Engineering Concept
“Lion in the Path”
The Mighty Chagres River
 The maximum observed rainfall is 5.86 inches
in one hour.
 The greatest recorded change in the river at
Gamboa is 25.6 feet in 24 hours.
 The excessive rainfall and precipitous
character of the hills enclosing the valley
make it a violent, torrential, and
unpredictable river.

Engineering Concept

Leaders
The Panama Canal

 Wallace began as Assistant Civil Engineer for the U.S. Engineering Corps, focusing on
river and harbor work on the Upper Mississippi. He was later promoted to Chief
Engineer and became General Manager of the Illinois Central Railroad. On May 6th,
1904, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed Wallace Chief Engineer of the
Panama Canal Project with a $25,000 annual salary, the highest of any government
employee other than the President.
 After 13 months overwhelmed and fearful of Yellow Fever, Wallace resigned abruptly
in June, 1905.
The Leaders…..
John Findley Wallace,
Chief Engineer (1904 – 1905)

John Frank “Big Smoke” Stevens,
Chief Engineer (1905 -1907)
 John Frank Stevens was a self-taught American Engineer who built the Great
Northern Railway. He was driven with a bull dog tenacity of purpose.
The Leaders…..
 At the start of his tenure Stevens
did the one thing that Wallace
failed to do - stop digging.
 Stevens' primary achievement
was to build the infrastructure
needed for the completion of the
canal. "The digging," he said,
"is the least thing of all." He
proceeded immediately to build
warehouses, machine shops,
and piers. Communities for
employees were planned and
built to include housing,
schools, hospitals, churches,
and hotels.
 He authorized extensive
sanitation and mosquito-
control programs that
eliminated yellow fever from
the Isthmus.

The Leaders….. Faced with the fact that what concept to
adopt for the Panama Canal had yet to be
finalized, Stevens argued the case against
a sea level canal like the French had tried to
build.
 He successfully convinced President
Theodore Roosevelt of the necessity
of a canal built with dams and locks.
 “Raise the Waters”

The Leaders…..
 As a railroad engineer, Stevens had little expertise in
building locks and dams, and probably realized he
was no longer the best person for the remainder
of the undertaking.
 President Roosevelt had decided that U.S. Army
engineers should carry out the work, and
appointed George Washington Goethals as chief
engineer under the direction of Stevens.
 In February of 1907, John Stevens resigned.
 The true reasons for his resignation have never been
conclusively determined.
 Stevens saw the early stage of the canal project itself as primarily a problem in
railroad engineering requiring:
 Rebuilding the Panama Railroad.
 Devising a rail-based system for disposing of the soil from the excavations.
 Modifying the railroad route to haul millions of cubic yards of rock and dirt out of
sites, and move tons of equipment from place to place.
 Allowing workers & their families to go to their work sites and neighboring towns
along the construction route.

The Leaders…..
Monument to John F. Stevens, Balboa, Canal Zone
 Steven’s successor, Colonel George Washington Goethals , U.S. Army, in a letter to
his son wrote "Mr. Stevens has perfected such an organization ... that there is
nothing left for us to do but just have the organization continue in the good
work it has done and is doing ... Mr. Stevens has done an amount of work for
which he will never get any credit, or, if he gets any, will not get enough ..."
“Eternal Goal
Railroad Engineer
of Great Achievements”

“Now, get me someone that can’t quit !!”
The Leaders…..

The Leaders…..
 Born in Brooklyn, NY in 1858.
 Graduated West Point in 1880.
 Lt. Colonel, Chief of Engineers, Spanish
American War.
 Appointed Chief Engineer of the
Panama Canal Project on March 4,
1907.
 Delivered the Canal in 1914, two
years ahead of the target date of
June 10, 1916 & under budget.
 Promoted to Major General by Act of
Congress in 1915.
 Appointed first Governor of the Panama
Canal Zone by President Wilson.
 Goethals later wrote that "the real
builder of the Panama Canal was
Theodore Roosevelt".
Colonel George Washington Goethals
Chief Engineer (1907 -1914)

The Leaders…..
 From this point on, the canal was under a military discipline & control.
 Used to working within the government's rules, he knew how to get what he needed
quickly.
 His usual work day started at 7:00 AM and finished around 11:00 PM.
 Goethals set up a complaint board and on every Sunday workers could come
and state their grievances directly to the Chief Engineer in his office in Culebra .
 Most of the workers came to respect Goethals and what he did for the organization
of the canal in a very short time.

 Responsibilities in the Isthmus extended well
beyond construction. He organized a strictly
regimented social order, with engineers and
designers at the top and workers at the bottom.
Each lived in separate communities with separate
amenities, with a court system adjudicated by
Goethals himself.
 Goethals had the ability to manage an
incredibly diverse & numerous workforce.
The Leaders…..
 Goethals supervised all major excavation and construction. He expanded the
proposed canal's size, taking into account U.S. Navy preferences for access,
passage, and defense.

"Colonel Goethals proved to be the man of all others to do the job. It would be
impossible to overstate what he has done. It is the greatest task of any kind that any
man in the world has accomplished during the years that Goethals has been at work.
Colonel Goethals has succeeded in instilling into the men under him a spirit
which elsewhere has found only in a few victorious armies."
The Leaders…..
November of 1910

The Leaders…..
Elizabeth, N.J. to Staten Island

 Graduate of U.S. Military Academy
 Responsible for Northern division
(Atlantic Side) reporting to Goethals &
member of I.C.C. overseeing:
 Construction of the massive
breakwater at the entrance to
Limon Bay
 Gatun locks and their 3.5 mile
approach channel
 Gatun Dam.
 Promoted in 1915 to rank of Brigadier
General and served in WWI in Europe.
 In January 1918 became the
commanding General of the US Army
Corp of Engineers Southeastern
Department located at Charleston,
S.C.
The Leaders…..
Colonel William Luther Sibert

The Leaders…..
Colonel Sibert contemplates the construction of the great Gatun Locks

The Leaders…..
Majors Gaillard and Sibert in the living room of Colonel
Goethals, May of 1907

 Graduate of the VMI with a degree in Civil Engineering
 Only civilian at this high level reporting to Goethals as
Division Engineer
 Responsible for Southern Division (Pacific Side):
 Entrance to the canal, including the 3 mile
breakwater in Panama Bay
 Approach channel
 Miraflores and Pedro Miguel Locks and their
associated dams.
 Designed and constructed Pacific Terminal docks,
water supply, sewers, road and streets for the
towns of the southern division including the city of
Panama
Sydney B. Williamson
The Leaders…..

 Gaillard was born in Manning, South
Carolina.
 He graduated from West Point in
1884.
 In 1907 he was placed in charge of
construction of the Central Division
of the Canal, which included the
excavation through the
Continental Divide.
 He returned to the US and died of a
brain tumor on December 5, 1913,
nine months before the canal's
completion.
The Leaders…..
Colonel David de Bose Gaillard,
Chief Engineer, Central Division

The Leaders…..
 Colonel Gaillard’s death at the time was
widely attributed to a mental breakdown,
incurred by long hours of work and
exposure in the Canal Zone, where he
pitted his skill as an engineer against the
shifting soil of the Culebra Cut.
 He never knew what a morning was to
bring forth. The mammoth rocks, clay, and
soil heavily saturated with rain wiped away
months of work in a matter of moments in
huge slides.
 Men who worked with him said he gave 12
hours every day to the Culebra Cut,
besides which, he took his share in the
labor of general administration of the Canal
Zone.
 He checked up expenses, even on small
things and once it was estimated he had
saved the project the substantial sum of
$17 million.Colonel Gaillard and his wife enjoy
a few moments of relaxation

 In 1998 it was moved to the
Administration Building in
Balboa, close to the Goethals
Memorial.
The Leaders…..
 Culebra Cut was
renamed Gaillard Cut on
April 27, 1915, and a
bronze tablet honoring his
memory was mounted at a
prominent point in the cut
in 1928.

Panama Canal - Class #2Major General William Crawford Gorgas
The Leaders…..
 Born in Alabama in 1854
 Father was a General in the Confederate Army
 Grandfather was a former Governor of Alabama
 Joined U.S. Army Medical Corp, 1880
 Stricken with Yellow Fever while stationed in Texas which left him immune.
 In 1898 stationed in Havana,
Cuba as Chief Sanitation Officer
to direct a control strategy to
identify and destroy mosquito
breeding eventually eradicating it
from Havana.
 Posted to the Panama in June
1904 as Chief Medical Officer.
 Served in Panama until 1914.
 Surgeon General of the Army,
1914-1918
 Died in London in 1920.

The Leaders…..
 Without his science, experience,
and determination, to implement
the massive program of
prevention, disease and death
would have seriously
undermined the building of the
Panama Canal
 “$10.00 Mosquito” story.

Battling Disease
The Panama Canal

 As noted in our first class, regarding the building of the Panama Railroad
and the failed French Enterprise (estimated over 22,000 deaths), there
were numerous health & safety threats including…..
 Typhoid
 Dysentery
 Food Poisoning
 Dengue Fever
 Accidents
 Snake Bites
..… but two other extremely lethal
diseases existed in Panama as well as
many other places across the world
 Malaria
 Yellow Fever
Health…..

 Patients with Malaria also experienced chills, headaches, fever, aching, fatigue,
and nausea. In the worst cases, malaria caused kidney failure and potentially
even coma or death. Unlike survivors of yellow fever, malaria survivors were not
immune to recurrences of the disease. Malaria's lower fatality rate and frequent
reappearance resulted in frequent hospital stays.
 Yellow Fever's gruesome symptoms and high death rate were so horrifying to
American canal workers that even a whisper of an outbreak sent boatloads of
men fleeing. Early symptoms of yellow fever were headaches, fever, and muscle
pain. As the disease progressed, however, the patient experienced jaundice,
thirst, and a dark black vomit caused by internal hemorrhaging. Ultimately, the
disease could lead to kidney failure, delirium, seizures, coma, and death.
 Most West Indian workers were immune to yellow fever, and very few of
them were admitted to the hospitals. Victims during the construction of the
Panama Railroad, the French Enterprise, and the U.S. Construction Era
therefore, were nearly all from North American or European origins.
Health…..

 Cuban doctor Carlos Juan Finlay published a paper “The Mosquito Hypothetically
Considered as the Transmitting Agent of Yellow Fever” was the first to correctly
identify mosquitoes as the ultimate source of the disease in 1891.
 Finlay’s theory was initially ridiculed and accepted only when U.S. Army scientists
working under Doctor Walter Reed demonstrated that it was correct two decades
later.
Dr. Carlos Juan Finlay
U.S. Army Doctors
Health…..

Female Anopheles
Female Aedes aegypti
The Disease Vectors
Malaria Yellow Fever
Health…..

 Colonel Gorgas arrived in the canal zone as Chief Medical Officer in the Fall of 1904.
Gorgas returned to Washington with a $1 million plan to fumigate the isthmus and
eradicate the Yellow Fever & Malaria. Officials scoffed at Gorgas' high price tag and
his mosquito hypothesis, instead adhering to the prevailing "miasma theory" which
stipulated that diseases are carried by bad air or toxins in tropical soil.
President Roosevelt's personal physician privately
advised the President………
"If you fall back on the old methods you will
fail, just as the French failed. If you back
Gorgas you will get your canal."
Health…..

 With the support of President Roosevelt and Chief Engineer John Stevens,
Gorgas led more than 4,000 workers on his "mosquito brigades" in what would
become a year long effort to prevent the insects from depositing their eggs.
Health…..
 His “army” of fumigators visited every private
home in Panama repeatedly, armed with cleaning
agents, insecticide powder, and wire mesh for
screen windows and doors.
 Teams sprayed drains and cesspools with oil and
filled in pools of standing water.
 In all, Gorgas' group consumed
 120 tons of pyrethrum powder
 300 tons of sulfur
 600,000 gallons of oil
 3,000 garbage cans
 4,000 buckets, 1,000 brooms
 1,200 fumigation pots

Health…..

Health…..
L'Hospital Notre Dame de
Canal, Ancon

Health…..
 Isolation of patients infected with either
Malaria or Yellow Fever was absolutely
critical to stopping the transmission of the
diseases.

On November 11, 1906, Colonel Gorgas assembled his staff in
the morgue of Ancon Hospital where he corrected proclaimed that
…
“This is the last Yellow Fever victim you will
ever see in Panama.”
Health…..

 Yellow Fever was totally eradicated and Malaria death rates were drastically
reduced.
 Death rate in employees dropped from 11.59 per 1,000 in November 1906 to 1.23
per 1,000 in December 1909.
 Death rate in the total population from a maximum of 16.21 per 1,000 in July 1906 to
2.58 per 1,000 in December 1909.
Health…..

 On the 1882 site of an earlier French hospital called L'Hospital Notre Dame de
Canal, Ancon Hospital was built in 1904 by the Americans. It was originally built of
wood, but was rebuilt in concrete in 1915 and was renamed Gorgas Hospital in
1928.
Health…..

Building the Canal
“Let the Dirt Fly”
The Panama Canal

Building the Canal …
 In a small ceremony the U.S. formally took control of the French property relating to
the Canal on May 4, 1904, when Lieutenant Jatara O’neel of the U.S. Army was
presented with the keys
 The newly-created Panama Canal Zone came under the control of the Isthmian
Canal Commission during canal construction.

 The three most critical construction elements necessary for the successful
accomplishment of the final Engineering Concept we looked at earlier included
among other things:
 Damming the Chagres River to create the largest man made lake in
the world & filling it to a height of 85 feet above sea level.
 Cutting through the Continental Divide down below the level of new
lake (40 feet above sea level).
 Constructing a series of Locks to lift ships up to the level of the
new lake (85 feet above sea level).

Critical Construction Projects
Gatun Dam
Culebra Cut
Gatun Locks
Pedro Miguel Locks
Miraflores Locks
Madden Dam
Madden Dam

Mighty Chagres River
“The Lion in the Path”
The Chagres
River at Gamboa

 Gatun dam was constructed
with the spoils of the huge
excavation projects
primarily from the Culebra
Cut.

Building the Canal
 Gatun Dam was built in Chagres Valley
about 6 miles from the coast in the gap
between two hills between 1906 and
1913.
 It is a huge earthen dam approximately
1.5 miles in length with a width of
2100 feet at its base.

 The gates are raised and lowered
to maintain the lake at its normal
level of 85 feet above sea level
and can release up to 49,000
cubic feet of water per second.

 Gatun Lake has an area of 164 square miles at a
height of 85 feet above sea level storing
183,000,000,000 ft³ of water, which is about as
much as the Chagres River brings down in an
average year.
 Water is the life blood of the Panama Canal
supporting twelve locks measuring 110 feet across
and 1,050 feet in length.
 Each passage through the canal requires 52 million
gallons of freshwater equivalent to 200 Olympic-
sized swimming pools.
 The Chagres would now forever flow into two
oceans.

Old Settlements Burned as Lake Gatun Rises - October 1, 1913

 When the canal opened in 1914, it became evident that for water management
purposes, another dam was needed. Before it was dammed, the Rio Chagres
used to flow out to sea all day long.
 However, now fresh water was flowing out to the Pacific locks as well. In other
words, the demand on the water faucet known as the Chagres River had doubled.
Madden Dam

 Construction began in 1931 and was completed in 1935.
 The dam was named Madden, after U.S. Congressman Martin B. Madden, Chair of
the House Appropriations Committee. The dam would not only help control the
tremendous floods of the Chagres, but also hold water in reserve for periods when
traffic through the canal was at its highest point.
 Another benefit was the
added hydroelectric power
it generated for use in the
operation of the canal.
 Madden Dam is located 250
feet above sea level and
retains 29 million cubic feet of
water.
Madden Dam

Culebra / Gaillard Cut

"The Big Ditch"

Americans take over
excavation of the Culebra
Cut, 1904

 For the whole length of the Culebra Cut from the surface to the proposed bottom
was120 feet with highest point located between Gold and Contractor’s Hills where it
was 272 feet.
 After the surface topsoil was removed solid rock was struck requiring the use of
around 60 million pounds of TNT to blast out a staggering 27 million tons of rock.

 All through the day drills operated by compressed air bore into the rock 24 feet.
 A small charge was set off in the bottom of these wholes to enlarge them for the final
charge of as much as 200 pounds of TNT.
 Then the men quit for the noon hour or 5:00
in the afternoon after which the charges
were set off electrically.

 While stringent rules were in
place for handling TNT,
accidental deaths claimed
the lives of many workers.
 Also numerous workers were
struck and killed by falling
rocks that were hurled long
distances.

 On December 12, 1908,
twenty-three workers died
when 44,000 pounds of
dynamite exploded prematurely.
 It was the worst accident of the
canal project, and happened at
Bas Obispo in the Culebra Cut.
 These photographs show how
one of the gigantic steam
shovels was thrown completely
across the cut and crushed.

Building the Canal … Each morning the steam shovels
would begin to load the rubble for
the dump sites.
 A flat car would be loaded in 2 1/2
minutes with 7 scoops full of
earth and rock per car.
 150 to 175 trainloads with
approximately 20 flat cars loaded
with spoil from the cut departed
daily.

 The railroad also transported
materials and labor.
 In addition, the trains serve as
sleeping quarters for workers and
pay cars.

American Ingenuity

Slowly but surely the Culebra
Cut approaches its required
depth of 40 feet above sea
level.

The Culebra Cut
Strikes Back!!!

A very destructive slide occurred in 1912 when seventy-five acres of
dirt near the town of Culebra broke away. It moved foot by foot into
the canal, carrying hotels and club houses down into the valley. It
took nearly half a year to repair the damage

 Many of the engineers were ready to give it all up. Colonel Goethals was
summoned hurriedly to the scene .... "What are we going to do now?" ... he was
asked. He calmly looked over the scene, lit a cigarette and replied ...
"Hell, dig it out again." That was his only reply.

 July of 1913, the last dipper
full of spoil is loaded on the
last train leaving the Culebra
Cut!

Panama Canal - Class #2February of 1908
Gaillard Cut Looking North
Current View

Contractors Hill
July of 1910
Current View

 A large percentage of the excavated
material was used to build the great dam
at Gatun as well as the reclamation of 400
acres from the ocean at Balboa on the
Pacific (southern) entrance to the Canal.
 In addition excavation was
used in the building of the
new Panama railroad,
and the new breakwater
and causeway to Naos
Island.

Balboa, Canal Zone

The Locks
Gatun
Pedro Miguel
Miraflores

 The two Pacific side locks were
finished first.
 The single step lock at Pedro
Miguel in 1911.
 The double step lock at
Miraflores in May, 1913.
 The triple step Gatun Lock was
finished by September of 1913.
 Construction of a three step lock
required for the Panama Canal
began at Gatun on the Atlantic side
on August 24, 1909.

 Huge overhead cableways were
constructed to transport concrete into
the construction at Gatun.
 85 foot high towers were built on the
banks of the canal, and cables of
2.5 steel wire were strung between
them to span the locks. Buckets
running on these cables carried up to
six tons of concrete at a time into the
locks.

 Electric railways were
constructed to take stone, sand
and cement from the docks to the
concrete mixing machines, from
where another electric railway
carried two 6-ton buckets at a
time to the cableways

Building the Canal
 More than four and half million cubic
yards of concrete went into the
construction of the Panama Canal's
locks and dams.

Building the Canal

 All lock equipment is operated electrically.
 The whole process of locking a ship is controlled from a central control room, which
is located on the center wall of the upper flight of locks. The controls were designed
from the outset to minimize the chances of operator error, and include a complete
model of the locks, with moving components which mirror the state of the real lock
gates and valves. In this way, the operator can see exactly what state the locks and
water valves are in.
 Mechanical interlocks are
built into the controls to
make sure that no
component can be moved
while another is in an
incorrect state such as,
opening the drain and fill
valves of a lock chamber
simultaneously.
Building the Canal

November 29, 1953
January , 2011
The famous….
….. and not so famous visiting
the Miraflores Locks
Building the Canal

 The gates range from 47 to 82 feet high, depending on position and are 7 feet thick.
The tallest gates are required at Miraflores due to the large tidal range there.
 The heaviest leaves weigh 662 tons. The hinges themselves each weigh 36,800 lb..
 Gates can only be opened when, in the operating cycle, water level on both sides is
equal.
Building the Canal

Building the Canal
 Each gate has two leaves, 65 feet wide, which close to a “V”
shape with the point upstream; this arrangement has the effect
that the force of water from the higher side pushes the ends of
the gates together firmly.

Building the Canal
 The original gate machinery
consisted of a huge drive wheel,
powered by an electric motor, to
which was attached a connecting
rod, which in turn attached to the
middle of the gate.
 These mechanisms were replaced
with hydraulic struts beginning in
January 1998, after 84 years of
service.
 The gates are hollow and buoyant,
much like the hull of a ship, and
are so well balanced that two
25 hp., half the power of a
Volkswagen Beetle, motors are
enough to move each gate leaf.

 Each chamber also contains a pair of auxiliary gates which can be used to divide
the chamber in two to provide redundancy in case of catastrophic gate failure
Building the Canal

Building the Canal
 An important safety feature
was the use of electric
locomotives, known as
mules, named after the
animals traditionally used to
pull barges.
 Mules are used for side-to-
side and braking control in the
narrow locks .

Building the Canal
 Forward motion into and through the
locks is actually provided by the
ship's engines. Ships approaching the
locks pull up to the guide wall, which is
an extension of the center wall of the
locks, where she is taken under control
by the mules on the wall before
proceeding into the first chamber.
 With large ships, there are two mules on
each side at the bow, and two each side
at the stern for a total of eight .

mules
Building the Canal

October 10, 1913
Blowing the Earthen
Dam at Gamboa

The initial detonation was
set off telegraphically by
President Woodrow Wilson
in Washington, DC.

Once the water from the Chagres was freed to flow
southward into the Culebra Cut, its water now essentially
connected both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans !

However, that meant
dealing with the never
ending series of slides
in the Gaillard Cut that
had to cleaned up by
dredges.

Cucaracha Slide
December of 1913

 After creeping 13 feet in the previous four years, the eastern Side of the
Cucaracha Slide reactivated in October of 1986 spilling over 500,000 cubic
yards into the cut.

Opening of the
Canal
The Panama Canal

Isthmian Canal Commission, Culebra, August of 1910
Opening of the Canal….
Maurice Thatcher
Colonel Goethals Colonel Gorgas
Lt. Col. Gaillard
Lt. Col. Sibert
Joseph Bishop Rear Admiral Rouseau Lt. Col. Hodges

 As construction tailed off, the canal team began to
disperse. Thousands of workers were laid off.
Entire towns (Culebra, Empire, Gorgona…) were
either disassembled and relocated or
demolished.
 Colonel Gorgas left to help fight pneumonia in
the South African gold mines and went on to
become Surgeon General of the Army.
 On April 1, 1914, the Isthmian Canal Commission
ceased to exist and the Canal Zone came under
the administration of a new Canal Zone Governor.
The first holder of this office was Colonel George
Goethals.

Opening of the Canal…

The seagoing tug Gatun, an
Atlantic entrance working tug
used for hauling barges, had
the honor on September 26,
1913, of making the first trial
lockage of Gatun Locks
under the watchful eye of
Colonel Goethals.

Test run at Pedro Miguel Locks on October 24, 1913 as part of
the dredging fleet was moved from the Pacific entrance to the
Culebra Cut.

 On January 7, 1914, the Alexandre La Valley, an old French crane boat, became
the first ship to make a complete transit of the Panama Canal under its own steam,
having worked its way across in the final stages of construction.
 At the time no one seemed to notice the irony of the first vessel being French,
which been left behind after the collapse of the Enterprise.

SS Advance entering
Pedro Miguel Locks,
August 9, 1914
Opening of the Canal

Gatun Locks
 The Panama Railway steamship
SS Ancon, piloted by Captain
John A. Constantine, the Canal's
first pilot, made the first official
transit of the canal on August 15,
1914.
Miraflores Locks

Panama Canal - Class #2Passing the Cucaracha Slide

 On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the Austro-
Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie,
were shot dead in Sarajevo, Serbia.

 A grand celebration was originally planned for August 15 of 1914, the official opening
of the canal, befitting so great an effort which had aroused strong emotions.
 The outbreak of World War I, July 28 of 1914, forced cancellation of the main
festivities and the grand opening became a modest local affair.
Tests - 1913
There were no
international
dignitaries in
attendance
Colonel Goethals
followed the S.S.
Ancon from shore,
by railroad.

U.S.S. Ohio, July 16, 1915 passing the Cucaracha Slide in the Gaillard Cut.

Miraflores Locks Opening of the Canal….

Pedro Miguel Locks Opening of the Canal….

Gatun Locks Opening of the Canal….

Presidential
Visits
 President Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
 President William Howard Taft
The Panama Canal

Before he became the 26th President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt had
been a governor, historian, adventurer, police chief, cavalryman, cowboy,
explorer, hunter, naturalist, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, author of 35
books, conservationist, and much more.
Presidential Visits ….
 While campaigning for a third term the
then former President Teddy Roosevelt
was shot in the chest in Milwaukee, WI
on Oct 14, 1912 on the way to give a
speech.. Fortunately his eyeglass case
and the folded speech were in the path
of the bullet.
 Since he wasn't coughing blood
afterwards, he figured he was fine
and delivered his planned two hour
speech before seeking medical
attention.

 At Ancon, construction of the big three-
story frame hotel called the Tivoli
Guest House, a structure begun the
year before but still far from finished,
rushed ahead with all speed as soon as
Stevens learned of the visit. One wing
of the building was finished and
furnished in six weeks.
 His enthusiasm for the Panama Canal project led him to see it for himself on
November 14 – 17,1906.
 This was the first trip outside the United States by a sitting President.
USS Louisiana
Tivoli Hotel (Guest House)

 During the first day of his
visit the President toured the
bay on the Pacific side in a
tug boat and then popped in
for a surprise visit and
lunch at an employee
mess hall instead of
showing up for the
luncheon in his honor at
the Tivoli Guest House.
President & Mrs. Roosevelt , La Boca Mess Hall

 Secret service men
frantically scurried around
trying to keep up as he
dashed around the Canal
Zone.
 He waved his hat and
flashed his toothy smile at
the workers & children
lined up to wave flags as
he passed.

 The President & Mrs. Roosevelt took the site-seeing train to Culebra Cut where he
walked the railway ties. He was continuously pointing out the things he wanted to
see, even going so far as to inquire of workers if they had any complaints.
 In his enthusiasm he inspected everything from dam sites, to steam shovels, to
kitchens, to military troops.

Panama Canal - Class #295 ton Bucyrus Steam Shovel at Pedro Miguel

To Kermit:
We were in Panama three days and we worked from morning till night. The second
day I was up at a quarter to six and got to bed at a quarter of twelve, and I do not
believe that in the intervening time, save when I was dressing, there were ten
consecutive minutes when I was not busily at work in some shape or form. For
two days there were uninterrupted tropic rains without a glimpse of the sun, and
the Chagres River rose in a flood, higher than any for fifteen years; so that we saw
the climate at its worst. It was just what I desired to do.
To Ted:
In the next place it is a tremendous sight to see the work on the canal going on.
From the chief engineer and the chief sanitary officer down to the last arrived
machinist or time-keeper, the five thousand Americans at work on the Isthmus
seemed to me an exceptionally able, energetic lot, some of them grumbling, of
course, but on the whole a mighty good lot of men.

 President Theodore
Roosevelt died January
6 of 1919.
 Ironically, the man
more responsible for
its building never
saw the Panama
Canal in operation.

 Goethals had met with President Taft and convinced him to make a visit to the Canal
Zone as there were critical decisions that had to be made such as:
 Future fortifications
 Fixing of tolls
 Improved wages
 Management of the Panama Railroad
 Sale of coal
 Forming a permanent government for the Panama Canal Zone
President Taft Arrives in the Canal Zone
 President William
Howard Taft left
Charleston, S.C. on
November 10, 1910
aboard the USS cruiser
North Carolina
accompanied by the USS
cruiser Montana.
USS North Carolina

President Taft & Colonel Goethals
Culebra - November, 1910
President & Mrs. Taft
arriving at Culebra, C.Z.

Panama Canal Course Day 2 final

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