Building the Panama Canal
Overview
In the early years of oceanic commerce, ships carrying goods between Europe and the Far East had to travel a long, circuitous 12,000-mile (19,308 km) route around the continent of South America. As early as the 1500s, Spanish rulers first explored the idea of creating a canal through the Isthmus of Panama to drastically reduce travel time. In 1903, a treaty between Panama and the United States finally paved the way for the construction of the Panama Canal, a massive feat of engineering which not only united two oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, but opened an invaluable artery for international trade.
Background
While the construction of the Panama Canal was not undertaken until the early twentieth century, it was first envisioned several centuries earlier. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) searched in vain for a passage between the North American and South American Continents. In 1534, Charles I of Spain recognized the value of cutting a route through Panama in order to gain greater accessibility to the riches of Peru, Ecuador, and Asia. He ordered a survey of a proposed canal route through the Isthmus of Panama drawn up, but unrest in Europe put the project on permanent hold.
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