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Panama CanalThe Panama Canal is a 51-mile-long waterway across the Isthmus of Panama in Central America. Each year, it allows as many as 14,000 vessels to travel between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. After its debut in 1914, it significantly shortened shipping times, and now accounts for about 5% of global seaborne trade. It remains one of the most ambitious engineering projects in history, requiring over three decades, 75,000 workers, and more than $5B in today’s dollars to build. In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty pledging to hand over control of the canal to Panama, ensuring the waterway would remain neutral. The canal passed from American to Panamanian control on December 31, 1999. Fees from vessels that use the canal—mostly container ships, but also those carrying cars, gas, refrigerated goods, and cruise passengers—add around $5B per year to Panama’s economy.Explore Panama Canal

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The century of the Panama CanalThe Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans through a 51-mile route that transformed global shipping when it opened in 1914. This breakdown covers how it was built, the workers behind its construction, and why its future may be challenged by climate and competition. 1440 Before the Panama Canal, there was the Panama railroadThe first ship to cross the isthmus of Panama went not by sea but by land: The paddlewheel steamship Explorer was taken apart and transported by rail, an effort that generated “more trouble than profit,” according to one account. Linda Hall Library Drought conditions force fewer ships to sail the Panama Canal dailyIn 2023, canal authorities reduced traffic in the canal amid severely dry conditions. These seven infographics from the Woodwell Climate Research Center explain exactly what happened that historically dry October, and how it affected global supply chains. Woodwell Climate The Panama Canal boosted the US as a world power in trade, engineering, and financeThe effort proved the US could achieve grand engineering projects while granting it influence over (and benefitting economically from) a major interoceanic channel and its host country, Panama. PBS Watch a ship pass through the Panama CanalMany of the world’s cargo ships are built to be as large as possible while still being able to fit through the Panama Canal’s narrowest locks. The size standard even has a name: Panamax (and, since the canal’s expansion in 2016, Neopanamax). To avoid running against the canal walls, locomotives hold the vessels in place as the chambers are filled and emptied. The Panama Canal Before dynamite was invented, Erie Canal builders blasted rock with gunpowderConstructed decades before the invention of dynamite, the Erie Canal’s toughest obstacles were blasted through using black powder charges. HISTORY Disney World is mosquito-less, thanks to civil engineer Joe PotterAs a former governor of the mosquito-prone Panama Canal zone, Potter understood the danger of standing water. At Disney, Potter built ditches to reduce moisture, designed buildings to channel water away, and more. His efforts help make Disney the magical kingdom it is today. The Mouselets Roughly 25,000 workers died building the canalFor each mile of canal that was built, 500 workers lost their lives. The threats came from multiple fronts: mudslides, floods, earthquakes and disease-carrying mosquitoes. Workplace accidents became so common that artificial limb manufacturers competed for contracts with the canal builders. History Dr. William Gorgas eradicated yellow fever in Panama, crucial to canal constructionThe disease was one of the factors hampering the French effort to build the canal. Gorgas' experience elsewhere in the Caribbean had taught him that good drainage and quaranting patients were essential, and he would eventually apply mosquito prevention tactics on a mass scale. Texas Standard Nearly all American skilled workers deserted the canal worksite the first yearMore than 75,000 workers labored to build the Panama Canal, and up to a third of them, by some estimates, died on the job. This gallery of 16 archival black-and-white photographs from PBS shows what life was like for the workers. PBS The US handed control of the canal back to Panama in 1999This was the result of two treaties signed during President Jimmy Carter's presidency, one shifting control to Panama and the other declaring the canal zone neutral. In recent years, US officials have suggested the US may retake control. Experts agree that the only viable way would be through military force. The Associated Press Container ships are just a fraction of total traffic via the canalWhile more container ships traverse the canal than any other type of ship, vessels carrying dry bulk goods, vehicle carriers, chemical tankers, passenger ships, and more also pass through the Central American passageway. Visual Capitalist The canal became the first use of lock-and-lake system at a massive scaleThe system centered around Gatun Lake, the largest human-made reservoir at the time, and two massive concrete locks that helped raise the ships 85 feet from sea level to the lake surface. The excavation was also the largest earth-moving project at the time, moving 240 million cubic yards of soil. HISTORY The US finished what the French had started with Panama's canalFor about two decades, Suez Canal-builder and Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps led the project, but financial troubles forced it into the hands of the US, who completed it in 1914. This timeline, made to accompany the definitive PBS American Experience documentary about the canal, highlights major moments in its construction. PBS The canal project required the forced removal of local inhabitantsThe canal displaced Panamanian communities, with towns like Gatun and Gorgona dismantled and farmlands lost, reshaping the region forever. 1440

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