15 Impressive Facts About the Panama Canal

The 50-mile Panama Canal was a multi-national, multi-decade project to link two oceans and transform global shipping. After completion in 1914, the canal helped turn the United States into an economic juggernaut. Here’s what you need to know.

1. Spain sought a navigable route through Panama in the 1500s.
2. After building the Suez Canal, French engineers tried to do the same thing in Panama.
3. The U.S. more or less stole Panama from Colombia.
4. Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the canal’s construction.
5. The first canal boss quit abruptly.
6. The second boss stopped scrapped the original plans.
7. The canal project literally moved mountains.
8. The most important member of the team might have been the sanitation officer.
9. Thousands of Caribbean laborers worked on the canal.
10. Floods and landslides stymied efforts.
11. Engineers constructed the world’s largest artificial lake.
12. The canal finally opened in 1914.
13. The Panama Canal became the most expensive project in American history.
14. It’s considered an engineering milestone.
15. The Panamanian government finally assumed ownership of the canal in 1999.

Spain sought a navigable route through Panama in the 1500s.

Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa first spotted the Pacific Ocean in 1513 and claimed the surrounding land, and the entire expanse of water, for Spain. Though he was later executed for treason, Balboa’s discovery led King Charles I (a.k.a. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V) to issue a decree in 1534 ordering the regional governor of Panama to seek a route across the Isthmus of Panama by way of the Chagres River. The plan was abandoned when the thick rainforests proved formidable. The Panama Railroad, when it opened in 1855, became the primary transportation route across the isthmus.

After building the Suez Canal, French engineers tried to do the same thing in Panama.

For most of human history, the route around Cape Horn at the southern end of Chile was the only navigable path between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, adding 8000 nautical miles to a journey from Europe or the Americas to Asia. But after completing the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869, French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps directed a team of engineers to construct a sea-level canal in Panama in 1880. The builders encountered tropical heat, heavy rainfall, landslides, and diseases. The deaths of 20,000 workers became the final straw in 1888, and funding was pulled from the bankrupt project.

The U.S. more or less stole Panama from Colombia.

After declaring independence from Spain in 1821, Panama became a part of the Republic of Gran Colombia, which also included Venezuela, Ecuador, and parts of Peru, Guyana, and Brazil. In 1830, the country dissolved, and one of the remnant pieces was New Granada (eventually renamed Colombia), which corresponded roughly to modern-day Panama and Colombia. As the canal project languished, the U.S. Isthmian Canal Commission was established in 1899 to study a potential water route, and the U.S. agreed to purchase France’s canal assets for $40 million a year later.

The Hay-Herrán Treaty, proposed in 1903, would have provided financial compensation to Colombia in exchange for the U.S.’s use of the isthmus. The Colombian Senate rejected the proposal on August 12, 1903. President Theodore Roosevelt responded to this affront by blocking Colombia's use of the railroad and sending warships to Panama’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts. With this not-so-subtle support from the United States, Panama declared independence from Colombia on November 3, 1903. On November 18, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and French engineer Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla—who had urged Panamanian independence and was then installed as the country’s minister plenipotentiary—signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, which gave the U.S. permission to build the canal. When Panamanian lawmakers expressed doubts about ratifying the treaty, Bunau-Varilla threatened to quash dissent with Colombian troops.

Theodore Roosevelt was instrumental in the canal’s construction.

In 1869, President Ulysses S. Grant had established the Inter-Oceanic Canal Commission to study possible routes across Central America and sent seven separate expeditions to Panama, but decided the idea was too expensive to pursue. Theodore Roosevelt, who succeeded William McKinley after he was assassinated in 1901, spoke of the need to build the canal in a speech to Congress. “No single great material work which remains to be undertaken on this continent is of such consequence to the American people,” he argued.

In addition to buying French assets, Roosevelt helped negotiate a one-time $10 million payment to Panama and agreed to pay the nation an annuity of $250,000. He also established the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC) on March 3, 1904, telling those in charge to “make the dirt fly.”

The first canal boss quit abruptly.

In June 1904, the U.S. took over where Ferdinand de Lesseps had left off. Chief engineer John Findley Wallace, who was paid $25,000 a year (the highest government salary other than the president’s) took charge of the project but grew frustrated with the country’s poor infrastructure, aging equipment, and tropical diseases that devastated workers. He resigned within a year.

The second boss stopped scrapped the original plans.

One of the first tasks undertaken by new chief engineer John Stevens, known for his work on the Great Northern Railway, was to halt excavation work and rebuild the rail system so it could carry away the tons of dirt and rock. Stevens also scrapped the plan for a sea-level canal and asked the ICC to approve a lock system with a dam and artificial lake. Stevens resigned the arduous assignment on February 12, 1907.

The canal project literally moved mountains.

Following Wallace and Stevens was George Washington Goethals, an Army colonel who had completed lock projects with the Army Corps of Engineers. His main task, in addition to overseeing work damming the Chagres River, was to excavate the Culebra Cut through Gamboa and Pedro Miguel. Also called the Gaillard Cut (named for Army engineer Lt. Col. David Gaillard), the 8-mile stretch of hills required 6000 workers using steam shovels, dynamite, and drills to haul away over 180 million cubic yards of earth.

The most important member of the team might have been the sanitation officer.

One of the first American arrivals after the takeover of the canal project was Dr. William Gorgas, the chief medical officer, who was tasked with combating malaria and other diseases that had wiped out so many French canal laborers. Gorgas’s superiors under Wallace’s leadership didn’t believe the theory that mosquitoes were the cause of both yellow fever and malaria, but Stevens gave Gorgas his full support to eliminate the diseases. Teams of sanitation workers put up screens, fumigated homes, and provided running water to area towns to improve public health.

Yellow fever was tamed by 1905, but malaria proved harder to beat. Gorgas and his wife Marie would later describe fighting malaria as “like fighting all the beasts of the jungle.” Swamps were cleared, vegetation was slashed and burned, ditches were built, insecticide was used liberally, and the rate of malarial infection finally plummeted from 7.45 cases per 1000 people in 1906 to just 0.30 cases per 1000 people by 1913.

Thousands of Caribbean laborers worked on the canal.

In sweltering heat, 40,000 workers contributed the physical labor required to build the canal. Most came from Barbados, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean. The United States opened a recruiting agency in Barbados to attract employees, with some historians estimating that 30 to 40 percent of the island’s adult male population was recruited to the canal zone.

Floods and landslides stymied efforts.

Speaking before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Stevens spoke of the need to forgo a sea-level canal, telling lawmakers, “the one great problem in the construction of any canal down there is the control of the Chagres River.” French engineers had struggled with flooding during their failed attempt, and the infamous Cucaracha Landslide in 1907 spilled 500,000 cubic yards of debris into the Culebra Cut. More landslides there in 1912 required 4.5 months to dig out.

Engineers constructed the world’s largest artificial lake.

The plans for a lock system required building a dam across the Chagres River, which crisscrossed the proposed canal route and whose currents varied with intense rainfall. When it was finished in 1913, the dam created Gatún Lake, the largest human-made lake in the world. It accounted for more than 20 miles of the canal route. Engineers also devised a set of locks at Gatún, with each lock chamber built in pairs to accommodate two-way traffic, and with identical dimensions of 110 feet by 1000 feet. Gravity powers the entire system: As water is diverted through culverts into the locks, it raises ships 85 feet to the surface of Gatún Lake, and then lowers the vessels back to sea level on the ocean side.

The canal finally opened in 1914.

In early August 1914, Germany declared war on Russia and France, signaling the start of the first World War. The Panama Canal officially opened on August 15, though the ceremony that had originally included an international fleet of warships and attendance by foreign dignitaries was tempered by the European conflict. The first ship to officially pass through the Panama Canal was an American cargo ship named the S.S. Ancon.

The Panama Canal became the most expensive project in American history.

Although the canal came in well under budget (about $23 million below the original 1907 estimate), the $375 million project was the most expensive construction job America had ever taken on. That cost included the $10 million and $40 million payouts to Panama and France, respectively. Original toll costs were $.90 per cargo ton, a price that stayed the same until it was raised to $1.08 in 1974.

It’s considered an engineering milestone.

In 1994, the American Society of Civil Engineers released a list of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. Along with the Panama Canal, which author David McCullough called “one of the supreme human achievements of all time,” the other wonders on the list were the Channel Tunnel built between England and France; the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada; the Empire State Building in New York City; San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge; the Itaipu Hydroelectric Dam in Brazil and Paraguay; and the Netherlands North Sea Protection Works.

The Panamanian government finally assumed ownership of the canal in 1999.

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed the Panama Canal Treaty (ratified by the Senate in 1978). It abolished all previous canal treaties between the U.S. and Panama and set up a 20-year transition period in which the U.S. would cede management of the canal and give Panama sovereign powers over the zone. On December 31, 1999, Panama officially gained control of the canal.

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A version of this story was published in 2016; it has been updated for 2025.