Panama Canal:  Post-Panamax

http://youtu.be/YzCULxAmkRU
Approximately one hundred years after President Theodore Roosevelt embarked upon the construction of the original 48-mile-long Panamal Canal,  the Republic of Panama began the final steps toward the completion of a more modern waterway in the summer of 2015.

The new project modernizes Lake Gatun and the the most difficult of the original cuts, the Culebra Cut, through nearly incorrigible  mountainous terrain.  So arduous was the Cut, the work hospitalized its manager, Col. David Gaillard, cousin of James L. Colee, the longest-serving director of the privately owned Florida canal company that would finance and build (1881-1912) what would become the toll-free federally controlled Florida section of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway in 1929.  James’s cousin David would not be able to attend the opening ceremonies of the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, led by the Army Corps of Engineers.

This videotape summarizes the one-hundred year-long history of one of America’s most expensive capital projects outside the United States to its controversial turnover to the Republic of Panama to Panamax, the modernization of the Panama Canal and the addition of a third modern lock to meet the challenges of  larger cargo vessels of the twenty-first century.  Tap on the link at the top of the new page after clicking the link at the top of this page.