MAY 2014 SUNRAYS | 35
ONLINE:
SCTXCA.ORG
Back to the Beginning
France, inspired by the vision of Fer-
dinand DeLessups, who had completed
the Suez Canal just a few years earlier,
embarked on the initial construction of
the Panama Canal in 1881, and through
private funding worked on it until 1894
when work was abandoned due to cost
and disease. The French government
fell, as thousands who had invested in
the project lost their life savings. Work
wasn’t resumed until 10 years later,
when Theodore Roosevelt was elected
President of the United States and en-
visioned the benefits to the U.S. Navy of
having a route from one ocean to another
that saved a travel distance of more than
8,000 miles.
When Columbia, which at the time
included Panama within its borders,
balked at terms the U.S. proposed for
the canal, Teddy Roosevelt used “gun-
boat diplomacy” to engineer a bloodless
revolution that made Panama indepen-
dent and able to negotiate its own terms.
The elimination of Yellow Fever and Ma-
laria were over-riding concerns for the
Americans, and, having been successful
in eliminating these diseases during the
recent Spanish-American War in Cuba
by targeting the mosquito populations,
the U.S. now initiated the most costly
hygiene campaign the world had ever
seen. The Chief Engineer of the canal at
the time estimated that every mosqui-
to killed had cost the U.S. government
$10, but the campaign was successful in
eliminating the threat of those diseases.
By 1914, the Americans were celebrating
the completion of the Panama Canal—
ahead of schedule and under budget. The
Continued on the next page
Above: A fruit vendor in Cartagena, Columbia. Below: Panama City’s not-yet-
complete Biomuseo, designed by architect Frank Gehry, and said by some to re-
semble a building “hit by a tornado.”
