The Panama Canal, now considered one of
the seven wonders of the modern world, was once the site of one of the world's
greatest roadblocks in engineering history. In its long journey to construction, it
took the lives of tens of thousands of workers. We all know the canal as a site of
smooth transitions from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa, but the land it
crosses carries a dark, deadly history. The Central American Isthmus separates the
Atlantic and Pacific oceans but connects North and South America. At its narrowest
point, only 50 miles of mountainous jungle and swamp separates east from west. Everyday,
up to 32 ships cross the Panama Canal, avoiding a lengthy trip around Cape Horn in Chile–
but each ship that passes through floats on the blood, sweat and tears of those who braved the
equator’s unrelenting heat to build the canal. Breaking up two continents is no easy feat.
In some ways, constructing the Panama Canal was like building a waterlogged great wall. The
construction of China’s Great Wall is estimated to have claimed the lives of over 400,000 people.
But things would be different with the Panama Canal. Millennia have passed and machines have
made construction projects much safer. Right? In the 1880’s rumors swirled about building a canal
in central America. The invention of the steam engine, advancements in steel manufacturing and
improved concrete manufacturing techniques made large scale engineering projects a lot safer and
more efficient. It seemed like the right time to get started on a project that people had thought
about for hundreds of years. The goal was clear, but what exactly it would take to get
there was more than anyone had anticipated. To understand why building the
Panama Canal was so deadly, we first have to understand the geography
and conditions of the Isthmus of Panama.
The strip of land the canal is built on is 30
miles across at its thinnest point. The canal itself is 50 miles from deep water in the Atlantic
to deep water in the Pacific. Fortunately, to build the Panama Canal, engineers didn’t have
to start from scratch. The location of the canal coincides with the natural flow of the Chagres
River. A key part of the canal’s construction involved damming the Chagres to create a lake deep
enough for massive boats to float through without running aground. This became Gatun Lake, which
now takes up 160 square miles of flooded land. The original plans for the Panama Canal
entailed digging into the earth 40 feet below sea level so the waters of the Atlantic
and Pacific could mix. But as we'll see that won’t happen. Carving out the equivalent of
a mountain was no easy task. Beyond that, engineers had to contend with the height
difference between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It sounds strange that one ocean would
have a higher sea level than the other, but it comes from a combination of factors, including
ocean currents, variations in temperature and salinity affecting water density, as well as the
Earth's rotation influencing ocean circulation, all of which combined lead to the Pacific
ocean being about 40 centimeters higher than the Atlantic. This was a problem, especially
when there was already a mountain between them. The task of building the Panama Canal was quite
steep– almost exactly as steep as the two mountain ranges looming over the site of the future canal:
the Tabasará Mountains and the Cordillera de San Blas. Nearby, the Cerro Jefe mountain top towers
3,300 ft above sea level. The canal was set to run from Limón Bay on the Caribbean sea to Miraflores
Lake by way of an artificial lake that was yet to be created. Over the course of 12 locks, any
ship passing through the canal will be raised and lowered 85 feet above sea level to cross. Using
the locking system, the canal’s designers were able to circumvent the challenge of flattening
the continental divide. The continental divide is the mountain range that determines if rainfall
will drain towards the Atlantic or Pacific oceans. So, what does this mean? Building the
Panama canal meant flattening a section of a mountain range. More than just layers
of rock and large boulders, the area was also a densely packed jungle, swarming with pests
and large animals, huge trees and thick brush. Beneath the stretch of land that would be carved
up to create the canal, a bedrock of slate and shale stood between engineers and the route
they imagined. The proposed site would follow the path of the Chagres River but also a Spanish
trade route called El Camino Real de Panama that connected Panama City on the Pacific coast, with
its trading partner, Portobelo on the Caribbean Sea. The Camino Real was the only road for
people to move valuable goods such as gold and silver from coast to coast through Panama. In
1850 construction began on the Panama Railroad, a 47 and a half mile route that cost a total
of eight million dollars. An estimated 6,000 died building it. While this is a huge number
of casualties for such a short stretch of rail, it’s only a fraction of the number who would
die to build a canal in the years to come. Building the canal along this route
was a nod to Vasco Nuñez de Balboa, the Spanish conquistador who established Spain’s
first South American settlement. He was the first European to set his eyes on the Pacific Ocean.
When Balboa wrote back to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Fifth with news of his discovery
of an ocean, he was rewarded by becoming the governor of Panama. Balboa’s expeditions and
adventures to this region identified the most promising location for a direct passage towards
Asia and Australia from Africa and Europe. But, as a precursor to the devastation that would
result from constructing the Panama Canal, the introduction of Spanish settlements
decimated local populations. Additionally, Balboa brought enslaved African
people to transport cargo along El Camino Real, establishing a new political,
social and cultural hierarchy that destroyed Panamanian traditions as well as their native
population. While the demographics of Panama changed drastically in the nineteenth
century, its weather was quite consistent. Average temperatures in Panama linger around
80 degrees Fahrenheit and it averages about 105 inches of rainfall a year. It’s wet, humid,
and nearly impossible to cool off in. Flooding was a regular occurrence, especially in the
wet season. The tropical weather was quite the adjustment for workers coming from
Europe and the United States. Even for workers coming to construct the canal from
Caribbean nations, the mountain jungles of Panama were a different beast.
But with the Panama Canal, the main cause of death would come at the
hands, or really the mouths, of tiny insects. Today we know that infected mosquitoes
transmit malaria parasites and the yellow fever virus when they bite people, but in
1850’s, people had no understanding of how these debilitating diseases were transmitted.
Many medical professionals believed Malaria was caused by something airborne coming out of
marshes. Just look at the word’s Italian roots: bad- ‘mal’ and air-‘aria’. Yellow Fever was
also thought to be the product of humid air mixing with undrained soil. While they were
onto something by noticing trends about humid environments and illness, they were way off in
their understanding of how these diseases worked. Scientist Louis Pasteur had just proposed a
theory that microbial germs caused disease, not things floating in the air or imbalances
in bodily fluids. His theory became known as germ theory and informs how we think about
cleanliness today. It revolutionized how scientists understood disease and gave them
a blueprint for how to combat sickness. Another medical breakthrough in the time of
the Panama Canal’s construction happened when a French doctor made an astonishing discovery while
treating patients for what was then called Marsh Fever. We now know this to be malaria. Dr.
Alphonse Laveran was studying a blood sample from a sick patient. He wanted to understand
what caused the disease at a biological level rather than just blaming the air. He was eager to
understand the root of the disease, not only so he could better treat his patients who had it,
but so people could avoid whatever was causing it. One day, he identified tiny, wriggling forms
swimming in the bit of blood he was examining. Lavern drew the connection that the moving dots
in the infected blood mimicked the patterns he had seen in parasites. But it would be more than
20 years until scientists confidently recognized that those parasites he spotted were the same as
those that were found in mosquitos. Around the turn of the century, people realized that these
insects actually transmitted those diseases. At that point, tens of thousands workers had
already made the trek to the thick jungles to work on the construction of the Panama
Canal. Thousands had died from malaria and yellow fever by the time science could
explain how the diseases were spreading. In the 1870’s, central Panama had a few built-up
cities populated by a combination of European expats and formerly enslaved people. Steam
locomotives now frequented ports in Panama City, San Miguelito and Colon. More and
more attention was directed to the development of Central America, and in
the middle of the age of imperialism, powerful countries from around the world
began taking an interest in the potential of an inter-oceanic canal. The pipe dream that
Vasco Nuñez de Balboa had all those years ago seemed like something that could actually
happen given the recent breakthrough in Egypt. The Suez Canal which cuts through the Isthmus of
Suez in Egypt wrapped up its ten year construction project in 1869. It was a feat of engineering the
likes of which the world had never before seen. Built across a 120 mile stretch of flat desert, it
was a long but relatively straightforward build, the brainchild of Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps.
Following the opening of the Suez Canal fleets of steam ships were trimming over 5,000 nautical
miles off trips from India to Europe. New ships were being designed that could carry larger
cargoes for shorter distances. Trade was flourishing and port economies were booming. Of
course there was the huge human cost to build it, and while the numbers are hard to pin down,
some estimates put the number of workers killed at over 100,000. But the everyday
utility of the Suez Canal made it easy to look past the cholera outbreaks and deadly
work conditions that the Suez Canal’s 1.5 million construction workers faced, and despite
the heavy casualties of the Suez construction, there was no hesitation when the idea arose
of doing something similar in Central America. Led once again by de Lesseps, the French broke
ground on the canal in 1881. He estimated construction would cost $132 million, and take 12
years to complete. It was a fraction of the size of the Suez canal, but because the terrain was so
inhospitable he estimated it would take longer. While he was right about that, his estimates about
the cost, both financial and human, were very off. Just months after starting work on the canal,
the first case of yellow fever was recorded, coinciding with the start of
the wet season. Fortunately, with the huge scale of the Panama Canal
project came a huge influx of money– and that money went straight towards a hospital. But
even with plenty of hospital beds and nurses, mosquitos were wreaking havoc on
workers. To add fire to the flames, these hospitals willingly surrounded themselves
with little channels of water. These were made to discourage ants from attacking their vegetable
gardens, but ultimately, they became hot spots for mosquito colonies. As insects of all
kinds became a larger and larger problem, hospital staff implemented every tactic they could
think of to address the problem. For some reason, they thought that placing water pans under bed
posts would keep insects away. They were wrong. Yellow fever, malaria and other pathogenic
illnesses became known as Tropic Fever. And Tropic Fever became known for wiping out
thousands of workers on the Panama Canal. People would vomit black fluids from bleeding
stomachs and turn yellow with jaundice. Whether on-site on this Isthmus or reading news of
the conditions thousands of miles aways, everyone started to realize the dangers of
working in the tropics. Contractors who feared for their own lives kept dropping out of the project
to the frustration of Ferdinand de Lesseps. But even with regular leadership turnover, excavation
projects continued. At its peak employment levels, the French employed more than 19,000 people,
bringing in workers from Caribbean islands, primarily Jamaica. More and more
people were being brought in, which meant that disease-carrying mosquitoes
had more and more bodies to feed on. On top of that, a civil war broke out
in the city of Colon. In early 1885, revolts broke out in responses to the newly
elected president. Revolutionaries opposed to the new government briefly took over Colon,
a key port city for the shipping of materials to build the canal. Rebels attempted to take
over a shipment of American weapons, and kept the men who refused to hand over the weapons as
hostages. A battle broke out between the rebels, Panamanian troops and U.S. seamen fought
to protect their own interests. Eventually, tensions settled, but not before a
massive fire swept through the city, decimating infrastructure and leaving
thousands of workers homeless. As years rolled on and the death toll
rose, progress plateaued. As of July 1885, only about one-tenth of the estimated
total de Lesseps projected had been excavated. The French team were
over budget, underperforming, and responsible for what is estimated to be the
deaths of nearly 20,000 people. As logistical, natural, and architectural difficulties
challenged the progress of de Lesseps design, he refused to adjust his vision for a sea-level
canal. So, more cohorts of workers would roll in, and less and less would return home. De Lesseps
wanted the canal entirely at sea level, like what he had done with the Suez. But his ambition
exceeded the ability of the technology he had and the labor force he was working with. Unless his
dynamite could explode ten times more forcibly or his workers developed a sudden immunity to
tropic fever, the Panama Canal seemed doomed. In May of 1889, all activity on
the Isthmus ceased. The French had to abandon the project that was
supposed to be a home run for them. Tropic fever, inadequate medicine, and a
poor understanding of science are in some ways responsible for the steep death toll of the
Panama Canal. But other factors relating to the intense nature of the construction project led
to many accidents that would claim more lives. Even after control of the project switched hands
to American engineers who implemented mosquito control measures, the Panama Canal would
still go on to claim thousands more lives. When the US took over the project in 1904, local
Panamanian residents avoided participating in the building of the canal. They had witnessed the
death that accompanied the first attempt to build the canal and wanted nothing to do with it. As a
result, American and British contractors decided to import labor once again, primarily from the
Antilles. Housing facilities were inadequate and food was sparse. At its busiest, up to
40,000 people were working on the canal at a given time. Generally, workers were contracted
to two-year stays. They would work for 4,500 hours over the course of their two years, at a
fixed rate of 10 cents per hour. A combination of language barriers, cultural difference, and racial
animosity created social rifts between Americans, Panamanians, and Caribbean workers. When a crisis
struck, be it an outbreak of disease or a tragic accident, these tensions only contributed
to a deeper sense of unrest and frustration. But, one notable shift that occurred after
the Americans took over was the death toll linked to mosquito-borne diseases. When they
took over the project, some people at the time jokingly considered yellow fever to be “the first
mountain to be removed”. This made light in some ways of the fact that the canal’s mission was to
decimate a mountain, but acknowledged that getting a handle on the insect problem was paramount
to connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean. US authorities created the Isthmian
Canal Commission to control the outbreak of yellow fever and malaria. By
the time the 1900’s came about, scientists were quite certain about the link
between mosquito bites and the transmission of disease. They set up a clear protocol for
how to implement mosquito control. All pools in close proximity to houses and villages
were drained. Brush and grass was cut to be less than a foot high. Buildings added
insect screens to their windows and drains to stop mosquitoes from getting in. Quality of
life improved as health standards soared. But while deaths by disease went down, the nature of
the project itself grew increasingly difficult. In 1909, accidents overtook disease as the leading
cause of death. In some ways this was an exciting milestone that was testament to the power of
mosquito control and advances in science. At the same time, it highlighted just how deadly it
was to be a part of building the Panama Canal. In the course of moving hundreds of thousands
of pounds of dirt, landslides and mudslides were frequent. Workers chipping away at the
side of a mountain could be buried alive in a moment when a cascade of rocks tumbled down.
When the United States took over the Panama Canal’s construction in 1904, they could build
off the partially excavated ditch the French had chipped away at. But they needed a new plan
if they wanted to have anything more than dirt. 240 million cubic yards of rock and dirt were
excavated under the American’s command. With that many rocks to move, many people were
injured, buried and killed. Of the 56,000 workers employed between 1904 and 1913, the US
recorded that 5,855 canal workers were killed. The most deadly section of the Panama Canal’s
construction was the Culebra Cut. Spanning the continental divide, the Culebra Cut was the
tallest land mass workers had to cut though. It was such a monumental task that those working
on the project referred to it as Hell’s Gorge. The section of mountainous land workers
would need to excavate was almost nine miles long. At its highest point,
the mountain that workers needed to cut through was 333.5 feet above sea
level. This wasn’t going to be easy. Crews blasted the mountain with explosives.
They used steam shovels to load loosened dirt into railroad cars which would carry it
away. New machines like dirt-spreaders, unloaders and railroad track-shifters
helped the crew manage huge loads and find spaces to redeposit dirt from the canal’s
excavation. These machines could do the work of hundreds of men in just a few hours,
but efficiency didn’t necessarily mean things were safer. Using this heavy equipment
high up on the canal’s wall left workers in compromised positions. Unstable ground
would regularly give way and people would be crushed or fall to their deaths. When heavy
rains brought sudden flood waters or mudslides, works on the floor of the canal could be buried.
Some died of electrocution. Others drowned. Once, an excavating machine accidentally set off
some explosives and 23 men died as a result. Every construction accident that you can imagine
happened while trying to create the Culebra Cut. Work in the canal was loud and hot.
Workers were exhausted and eager to finish the project. As one of the mosquito
control measures, workers were encouraged to drink quinine as an anti-malaria measure. But,
quinine treatment tended to cause high-tone hearing loss. And for workers navigating crowded
construction sites, with loud machinery echoing through the tunnel-like walls of the canal,
it was easy to miss a message about where to stand and when to duck. The chaotic environment at
the bottom of the canal lent itself to accidents. But work went on. With the final goal of creating
a pass that was 300 feet wide and 45 feet deep, crews had to move a lot of dirt. It’s estimated
that over 60 million pounds of dynamite were used to make the Culebra Cut alone. Even with
temperatures soaring over 100 degrees, workers managed to lower the floor of the excavation
site to within 40 feet of sea level. There’s more to the Panama Canal than just its
excavation. Construction of the Gatun Dam was essential for the Panama Canal’s updated design.
This earthen dam was a make-or-break feature of the canal. If it worked it would create a man-made
lake that would let boats pass the continental divide without having to level it to sea level.
The plan was to dam the Gatun Lake at a height of 85 feet above sea level. To get boats up to the
lake and lowered back down to sea level, engineers planned to use a series of locks to raise and
lower ships. This way, they could use water control to push boats up higher rather than having
to cut deeper into the unforgiving landscape. Construction of the locks began in 1909
and would wrap up in 1913 when work on the Culebra Cut and Gatun Dam also finished.
A total of 46 gates keep sections of the canal at the proper height. To move a
ship from one end of the canal to another, 52 million gallons of water are used. The exchange
of water from one lock to the other takes a much smaller toll than the casualties that would
have inevitably come about from trying to make the canal at sea level. Having control over
the flow of water by using locks has proven to be useful for managing traffic through the canal.
It also lessened the possibility that flooding in the wet season or a dry spell might leave
the canal drained or impassible with rapids. The Canal’s construction not only changed
the geography of the Isthmus of Panama, but also changed trade routes,
balances of power between nations, and how humans approached nature. Over the
course of the thirty years that it was built, machinery improved, engineering advanced,
and we learned how to control previously unknown diseases. Once it was constructed,
the Panama Canal was seen as considered a triumph of the tropics. But it came at
quite a high price of 25,000 human lives. Now for more stories of
doomed construction projects, check out “the Real Reason Why Italy’s
Plan to Build a Bridge to Sicily Won’t Work” or “the Real Reason There Is
No Bridge Between Russia and Alaska”
