HISTORY
effort under Col. William C. Gorgas, wiping out the diseases that defeated the French. The monumental construction was completed in 10 years at a cost of about $387m. Its triumphant culmination was due principally to the arduous labour of about 30,000 manual workers, most of them from the Caribbean, and to the engineering and administrative skills of John F. Stevens and Col George W. Goethals. They had to dig through the Continental Divide, create the largest artificial lake of its time, earth dams and build three sets of twin locks, with gates bigger than everyone had ever imagined and solve environmental problems of enormous proportions.
Goethals completed the construction ahead of time and under budget and on August 15, 1914, the US cargo ship Ancon made a historic first official transit. No other construction in the modern world has such a long history of personal defeats and victories, of heroism and great engineering than the building of the Panama Canal.
he Panama Canal Museum is one of the most visited features of the Capital City colonial area because it is located in an historic and charming 19th century building of traditional French architecture, in the Casco Viejo (Old Compound) neighborhood. It was inaugurated in 1997, during the Canal Universal Congress that celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Panama Canal treaty signature that would transfer the waterway to full Panamanian ownership on December 31, 1999.
T Built in 1875 by French
entrepreneur George Lowe to house the Grand Hotel, the most fashionable hostelry of its time in Central America, the building has remained a landmark of Panama for decades. When the French Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique began operations in Panama, Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had stayed at the hotel in 1880, bought the premises in October 1881 to establish his offices and the company’s administration. The building changed owners when the United States bought the French remaining installations in 1904, installing the headquarters of the Isthmian Canal Commission until 1909. The US sold the edifice to the Panama government in 1910 which located the Mall and Telegraph Office where it remains well into the 1990s. With help from the European Union, Panama restored the building,
PANAMA MARITIME REVIEW 2011/12
with its typical French Mansard-styled windows and red tiles, today the best example of the French architecture influence in Panama.
The Museum periodically presents special exhibits in addition to its permanent collection, that tell the history of the Panama Canal and has a remarkable acquisition of documents from the first studies in the 1800s to the monumental efforts the US government and its Army Corps of Engineers displayed during the construction of the Canal. These provide a walking journey through the history of the waterway and the nation’s.
There is a Treaties’ room that shows the original Hay-Bunau Varilla’s treaty signed in 1903 that gave the US’ perpetual jurisdiction over the Canal Zone and the treaty signed by late
Gen. Omar Torrijos and former President Jimmy Carter in 1977 that returned to the Panamanians the so- called colonial enclave.
The Museum is administered by a board of trustees that include Panama Canal Authority officials.
Local collectors and the Panama Canal Authority have donated most of the objects and Canal memorabilia permanently exhibited. The Museum’s rich collection is available to students and researchers who contribute with their works to enhance the collective memory of the Museum.
The Museum (Tel: +507-211 16 49/ 16 50) is open from Tuesday to Sunday, closed on Monday, from 9:30am to 5:30pm. Admittance is US$2 for adults, US$0.75 for children.
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More than a million ships have transited the waterway since it was opened to the world shipping fleet. Since 2007, the Panama Canal Authority has begun the construction of a third lane with larger locks allowing the passage of huge post-Panamax, following the approval by the Panamanians of a referendum on the Canal expansion that
The Panama Canal Museum
will bring the canal well into the 21st century. The $5.25bn works, including the construction of the third set of locks which was awarded to the multinational consortium Grupo Unidos Por el Canal (GUPC), should be completed in 2014 and will likely be inaugurated officially to commemorate the 100th anniversary of this remarkable feat of engineering. •
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