Very few human endeavors have ever conceded to change the face of the planet on which we live, as did the successful completion and construction of the Panama Canal in 1914 by the United States. No human endeavor had ever even aspired to accomplish something so incredulous as splitting the continents. This is what the United States did and more - the Panama Canal was soon to become a vital link for the entire world. Despite previous failures by other organizations, the United States as a whole was able to overcome the numerous dangers present at the isthmus between North and South America, and build what remains today one of the greatest engineering marvels of the modern world.
If it were known beforehand how much it would have taken to make the Culebra Cut, there would have been no Panama Canal. It ended up costing $10,000,000 a mile to dig the Culebra Cut at its present level, and the excavation of over 100,000,000 cubic yards of material. There now stretches through the backbone of the intercontinental divide a canyon cut by human beings, the only one on the earth. Nine miles long, with an average depth of 120 feet, with a bottom width of 300 feet, and with a top width which reaches at places to a third of a mile, this marvelous canyon presents at once an inspiring and awesome aspect, revealing both man's audacity and nature's grim resistance to his efforts.
On either side of the gorge rises a majestic peak, standing as sentinels guarding the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But now, where once they were bound together with chains of primeval rock they are separated by the arm of a lake, the largest yet created by human cunning. Where once the Chagres River encountered immense barriers, which turned it about and forced it to flow into the Atlantic, now it comes down into that wide lake, whose waters may be made to flow either into the Atlantic or the Pacific, at the touch of a button.
The next question was where to locate the canal. A French company under Ferdinand de Lesseps had started construction of a sea-level canal in Panama in 1881, but the project went bankrupt after a few years. In 1901, a U.S. commission recommended that the canal go through Nicaragua rather than Panama. But representatives of the New Panama Canal Company (which had taken over the French rights in Panama) lobbied vigorously for the Panama route, and President Theodore Roosevelt settled on it when the company reduced its asking price from $109 million to $40 million. The U.S. commission then reversed itself in January 1902, and in June, Congress authorized construction of the canal through Panama.
Early the next year, Congress ratified the Hay-Herrán Treaty, which granted the United States a strip of land ten miles wide across the isthmus for $10 million in cash and an annuity of $250,000 per year. But the senate of Colombia, hoping for a higher price, refused to approve the treaty. The United States provided indirect support and promptly recognized the new Republic of Panama. Within a week the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty was signed, granting the United States a renewable ninety-nine-year lease on the Canal Zone in exchange for the same payment that had been offered to New Granada. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty in February 1904.
Various logistical problems, indecision about whether to build a sea level or a lock canal, and the devastations of tropical disease delayed construction until 1906. A lock canal was decided upon, and work began on surveys and construction of the necessary facilities. Col. William Gorgas made a crucial contribution with his eradication of yellow fever and malaria. Col. G. W. Goethals of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers directed most of the actual construction, which cost well over $300 million and involved the excavation of 240 million cubic yards of earth. The canal, forty miles in length, opened to shipping in August 1914 and was formally dedicated on July 12, 1920. In 1921, the United States paid Colombia $25 million as redress for the loss of Panama; in exchange, Colombia formally recognized Panama's independence
Finally on September 7, 1977, new President Jimmy Carter and Panama's chief of government, Brig. Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera, signed two treaties in the presence of twenty-six representatives of Western Hemisphere nations. The United States agreed to turn the canal over to Panama on December 31, 1999. The treaties included provisions protecting America's interests in the canal and increasing Panama's economic benefits
The Panama Canal was, is, and shall remain the terrain-engineering marvel of the 20th century. Never before, nor since has any project accomplished the feats of mastering the elements, of engineering and construction, or of future planning as has been done at Panama; After 87 years of continuous service, it continues to be as useful as the day it became operational. An operation that was impossible only 30 years earlier, the American country rallied behind the energetic laborers that were going to bend the isthmus between North and South America until it broke and a new path between the seas was created. Killer diseases, high costs, seemingly impossible excavations, all faced the engineers at the Canal Zone, but one by one they were overcome until the Panama Canal alone stood out from among the rubble and invited people of the world to come and cruise her waters - a new pathway for the ever-expanding, ever-changing human race.