Gatun Lake
| Gatun Lake | |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 9°11′23″N 79°53′15″W / 9.18972°N 79.88750°W |
| Type | artificial lake |
| Primary inflows | Chagres River |
| Basin countries | Panama |
| Surface area | 425 km² |
| Surface elevation | 26 m |
| Islands | Barro Colorado Island |
Gatun Lake (Sp. Lago Gatún) is a large artificial lake situated in the Republic of Panama; it forms a major part of the Panama Canal, carrying ships for 33 km (20 miles) of their transit across the Isthmus of Panama.
The lake was created between 1907 and 1913 by the building of the Gatun Dam across the Chagres River. At the time it was created, Gatun Lake was the largest man-made lake in the world, and the dam was the largest earth dam.
Description
The lake is situated in the valley of the Chagres River. It was formed, and the river widened and deepened, by the construction of the Gatun Dam about 10 km (6 miles) from the river's mouth in the Caribbean Sea in 1907–1913. The geography of the area was ideal for the creation of a large lake here; the hills bordering the valley of the Chagres open up widely around the area of the lake, but come together to form a gap just over 2 km (1.4 miles) wide at the location of the dam. The damming of the river flooded the originally wooded valley; almost a century later, the stumps of old mahogany trees can still be seen rising from the water, and submerged snags form a hazard for any small vessels that wander off the marked channels.
Gatun Lake has an area of 425 km² (164 square miles) at its normal level of 26 m (85 ft) above sea level; it stores 5.2 cubic kilometres (183,000,000,000 ft³) of water, which is about as much as the Chagres River brings down in an average year.
With the creation of the lake many hilltops became islands. The biggest and best known of them is Barro Colorado Island, home of the world famous Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).
The lake has given its name to the Gatun structure, which may be an eroded impact crater.
Role in the canal
Gatun Lake forms a major component of the Panama Canal; the lake, including the flooded arm extending up the Chagres River, makes up 32.7 km (20.3 miles) of the raised part of the waterway, the other part being the 12.6 km (7.8 mile) Gaillard Cut.
The canal follows a clearly marked route around the lake's islands, following the deeper water south from Gatun Locks, and then east. A small "shortcut" channel, the "Banana Cut", runs between the islands, providing a slightly shorter route through the lake; this is used by canal launches and yachts to cut a little time off the crossing, and to avoid the heavy ship traffic.
The lake is also important as a reservoir of water for the operation of the canal locks. Each time a ship transits the canal, 202,000 m³ (53 million U.S. gallons) of water is passed from the lake into the sea; with over 14,000 vessel transits per year, this represents a very large demand for water. Since rainfall is seasonal in Panama, the lake acts as a water store, allowing the canal to continue operation through the dry season.
A major factor in water regulation is the ability of the rainforest in the lake's watershed to absorb rainfall, releasing it gradually into the lake. However, significant deforestation of the watershed has cleared away much of the vegetation, and reduced the area's water capacity. This has resulted in falling water levels in the lake during the dry season. Coupled with the massive increase in canal traffic since its opening, and the resultant increase in water usage, this is an ongoing problem for the canal (see Panama Canal: Water issues).
HISTORY OF THE PANAMA CANAL AND GATUN LAKE
50 miles wide at its narrowest point the Isthmus of Panama was historically characterized by mountains, impenetrable jungle, deep swamp, torrential rains, hot sun, debilitating humidity, pestilence and some of the most geologically complex land formations in the world. Building a canal across Panama had already defied and defeated the technical expertise of one of the greatest nations on earth, France. Furthermore neither French engineers under de Lesseps nor the American effort were able to control the devastating Chagres River floods until construction of the Madden Dam above Gamboa in the 1930s. With the 1513 crossing of Vasco Nuñez de Balboa began the dream of digging a water passage across the Isthmus of Panama. King Charles ordered a survey for a water route from Atlantic to Pacific Oceans following the Chagres River. In 1534 this was the first survey for a proposed ship canal through Panama, and it more or less followed the course of the current Panama Canal. The 1848 discovery of gold in California caused a mass migration of people traveling across the Isthmus. Thousands crossed the Isthmus using the Panama Railroad during its construction and when operational. U.S. interest in a canal was keen. From 1870 to 1875 an Interoceanic Canal Commission was appointed by President Grant to evaluate the findings resulting from Navy expeditions. A report was prepared by the Commission in 1876 favoring a Nicaragua route. Following President McKinley's assassination, Theodore Roosevelt became president and for him, there was no romance about the project, no nonsense about following a dream. As far as Roosevelt was concerned the canal was practical, vital and indispensable to U.S. destiny as a World power hence a U.S. controlled canal was an utter necessity. On February 15, 1898 at a naval base in Cuba which had been established as a result of the Spanish-American War the battleship Maine was blown up, with 260 lives lost. The battleship Oregon stationed in San Francisco was ordered to proceed at once 12,000 miles around the Horn to restore order. The Battle of Santiago Bay was settled 67 days later when the vessel finally arrived off Florida clearly demonstrating the military significance of an Isthmian canal. Roosevelt supported Panama’s independence movement by dispatching warships to both sides of the Isthmus; the Atlanta, Maine, Mayflower and Prairie at Colon and the Boston, Marblehead, Concord and Wyoming at Panama City effectively blocking Colombian sea advances. U.S. troops protected the American owned railroad and interior parts of Panama to obstruct Colombia from putting down the revolution. Roosevelt would later boast that "...I took the isthmus, started the canal and then left Congress not to debate the canal, but to debate me." On November 3, 1903 Panama declared independence from Colombia and signed a treaty granting the United States a sovereign canal concession. The founders of Panama had little choice as to refuse would have withdrawn all U.S. support and left them to deal with Colombia. The United States had finally achieved the control it required to begin the colossal work of a canal construction. The U.S. canal construction effort began May 4, 1904 when Army Corps of Engineers officer Lieutenant Mark Brooke in a brief ceremony received the keys to the French storehouses and Ancon Hospital. Dr .William Crawford Gorgas and his staff were among the first to arrive in Panama which had been known for centuries as the “Fever Coast” because of sickness and death supposedly caused by "miasmal mists" stemming from the swamps. However some medical researchers were becoming more receptive to the idea of mosquitoes causing malaria and yellow fever. Widespread malaria and yellow fever epidemics were among the formidable difficulties that had to be overcome to build the Panama Canal. Eradication of the death dealing mosquito was urgent. In 1903 a scientific congress in Paris reviewed Dr. Walter Reed’s yellow fever work and proclaimed it a “scientifically determined fact” but still Commission officials believed Gorgas’s efforts to be a waste of time and money. However in 1905 John F. Stevens provided Gorgas with full support. As a result of Gorgas’s campaign, yellow fever was wiped out, the last case reported in Panama City on November 11, 1905. Chief engineer John F. Stevens immediately confronted and solved many problems between July 1, 1905 and April 1, 1907. The size of the labor force was tripled in six months under Stevens and whole communities were built to accommodate them. The Panama Railroad was completely overhauled as Panama was insufficiently developed or equipped to support the additional population created by the growing Canal labor force. The insubstantial equipment of the French was replaced with the finest and toughest available. Water and sewage systems were established, new buildings created and streets were paved. This construction employed nearly half of the 24,000 man work force. Stevens also developed the inventive system of Canal excavation and “spoil” disposal. He devised an ingenious complex of railroad tracks at different levels within the Cut. Col. Goethals under whose leadership the Canal was completed would say: "Stevens devised, designed, and made provision for practically every contingency connected with the construction and subsequent operation of the stupendous project... It is therefore to him, much more than to me, that justly belongs the honor of being the actual 'Genius of the Panama Canal...'" Water is the key factor in the whole Panama Canal enterprise. Water lifts ships 85 feet above sea level to the surface of Gatun Lake where they float across the Continental Divide to then be lowered again in the opposite ocean. It serves to generate electrical power for the Canal to run. The Pacific-side locks were finished first, the single flight at Pedro Miguel second in 1911 and Miraflores in May of 1913. On May 20, 1913, shovels No. 222 and No. 230, which had been slowly narrowing the gap in Culebra Cut, met. The Cut had reached its full construction-era depth, 40 feet above sea level. On June 27, 1913 the last of the Gatun Dam spillway gates was closed, allowing the lake to now rise to full height. Dry excavation ended three months later. The last steam shovel lifted the last rock in the cut on the morning of September 10, 1913. On September 26, 1913 the tug Gatun made the first trial lockage of Gatun Locks. Further testing the system an earthquake struck on September 30, knocking seismograph needles off the scale. There were landslides throughout the country and cracked walls in some Panama City buildings but no damage whatsoever to any part of the Panama Canal. That same week six big pipes in the earthen dike at Gamboa flooded Culebra Cut. On October 10, 1913, President Woodrow Wilson pressed a button in Washington and relayed by telegraph from Washington to New York to Galveston to Panama the signal that blew the center of the dike to complete the flooding of the Cut and join it to Gatun Lake. On November 17, 1913 a sail ship the USS Ancon was the first to completely navigate the canal from one ocean to the other. The Alexandre La Valley made the first complete Panama Canal passage by a self-propelled, oceangoing vessel on January 7, 1914. At $387,000,000, including the $10,000,000 paid to Panama and the $40,000,000 paid to the French company and an extra $12,000,000 for fortifications the Panama Canal was the single most expensive construction project in United States history. Remarkably, the canal cost $23,000,000 below the 1907 estimate in spite of the newness of the science, of landslides and of a design change to a wider canal. Over 30,000 lives were lost building the Canal and more than 80,000 persons were involved in the construction. French and American expenditures totaled $639,000,000 taking 34 years from the original endeavor in 1880 to essentially open the Canal in 1914. After more than 80 years of service, the concrete of the Panama Canal locks and spillways is in near perfect condition, which is among its most exceptional aspects. David McCullough author of "The Path Between the Seas" wrote: "The creation of a water passage across Panama was one of the supreme human achievements of all time, the culmination of a heroic dream of over four hundred years and of more than twenty years of phenomenal effort and sacrifice. The fifty miles between the oceans were among the hardest ever won by human effort and ingenuity, and no statistics on tonnage or tolls can begin to convey the grandeur of what was accomplished. Primarily the canal is an expression of that old and noble desire to bridge the divide, to bring people together. It is a work of civilization." Theodore Roosevelt is widely credited for building the Panama Canal, and he never disputed the claim. However, of the three presidents whose terms coincided with Canal construction – Theodore Roosevelt, Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson – it was Howard Taft who provided the most active, hands-on participation over the longest period. Goethals, however, was to write, “The real builder of the Panama Canal was Theodore Roosevelt."
Displayed at the Panama Canal Administration Building is a plaque with the following words engraved:
"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."
- THEODORE ROOSEVELT
References
- History Of The Panama Canal, by Ira E. Bennett
- The Panama Canal, by Colonel George W. Goethals