A Will and A Way
Against all odds, a headstrong president and an unflappable Army engineer combined forces to join the Atlantic and the Pacific
Tropical heat. The victory over mosquitoes opened the door for work on the canal to begin in earnest. Tens of thousands of workers were imported from the Caribbean and the United States, and soon American engineers learned what a task they had in store. Few Americans had ever worked so close to the equator. In the Culebra Cut, the canal's major channel and most challenging spot, temperatures hovered between 100 and 130 degrees Fahrenheit in the heat of the day.
Engineers initially estimated that 54 million cubic yards of dirt would have to be moved to cut the channel. By the time of completion, that number was closer to 100 million cubic yards. Work went on around the clock. Blasting a canal through the rock of the Culebra Cut and elsewhere took 61 million pounds of dynamite and claimed thousands of lives. "We are having too many accidents with blasts," Goethals wrote in 1907. "One killed 9 men on Thursday . . . The foreman all blown to pieces." A worker had a more visceral view: "The flesh of men flew in the air like birds many days."
But heat, disease, and blasting accidents all paled next to the problem of landslides. They proved nearly impossible to stop and added years to the construction time. "They didn't know about the stability of slopes or how steep you could make slopes," says Virginia Tech engineering Prof. J. Michael Duncan. "They just had optimistic estimates based on wishful thinking." Yet Goethals remained unflappable. After one catastrophic collapse, he was called to the scene by panicked employees. "Hell, dig it out again," Goethals told them.
If Goethals was the brain and steady hand behind the canal, Roosevelt was its heart. The flamboyant president saw the canal as a physical expression of America's imperial destiny, and he turned it into a personal and national obsession. For example, when Colombia--which owned the canal zone--refused to sign a treaty allowing work to begin, Roosevelt took matters into his own hands. He engineered an American-sponsored "revolution" in Panama, posting American gunboats off the coast and landing American soldiers to cut off the railroad and prevent Colombian troops from arriving.
The former Rough Rider's boldness inspired other Americans. As the project picked up steam, engineers and artisans from across America headed to the strange land to work on the canal. "With Teddy Roosevelt, anything is possible," one steam shovel engineer told his wife.
When work on the canal was completed in 1913, the final bill was a staggering $352 million--more than five times what the government had paid for the Louisiana Territory, California, Florida, and Alaska put together. It was worth the cost. The canal remains a crucial link between the Pacific and the Atlantic and has come to define international commerce. But despite its global significance, the canal played an equal role in shaping the American character. "It was nation-changing," says Shayt. It was "the union of two American lakes."
Panama Canal map
[labels]
PANAMA
Atlantic Ocean
Pacific Ocean
Culebra Cut
Panama City
[inset map]
Area of detail
Colombia
Map by Scott Greenway--USN&WR
DRAWING BOARD
TUNNEL TO ASIA
Memphis to Moscow by rail? That's the dream of George Koumal, a Tucson engineer and president of the Bering Strait Tunnel and Railroad Group. Key to his vision is a 60-mile-long undersea railroad connecting Alaska and Siberia. Investors have not flocked to fund a tunnel twice as long as the Chunnel, in a place where no rail lines yet exist. But some Alaska legislators like the idea, as does Russia's minister of transportation. -David Grimm
[Map labels]
Russia
Bering Strait
Alaska
Proposed tunnel
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