The longest shortcut
The problem was the great 12,000 mile distance to go around South America to get to from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean or vice versa. The solution was to make canal to cut the distance down significantly. Vasco Nunez de Balboa discovered the Pacific coast in the 1513. Many famous people including Benjamin Franklin suggested that a route could be made through Panama to shorten the path. However, others people disagreed that it could be done in Panama. German explorer Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt believed that Panama was too mountainous and the wrong place to build the canal. "U.S. Army Col. Charles Biddle concluded after four days of hiking in the jungle that the impracticality of building a canal in Panama ought to be clear to anyone." (Kiger)Designing, constructing, and implementing the Panama Canal is one of the largest macro-engineering projects in recorded history. It took a two nations and the workforce of many other nations to complete. Columbia lost a large part of its land and the Republic of Panama was created for the sole purpose of building the Canal. "Apart from wars, it represented the largest, most costly single effort ever before mounted anywhere on earth." (McCullough 11) No
The Panama Canal is forty miles long and saves eight thousand miles off the trip from The Atlantic to the Pacific. The canal goes south from the Atlantic Ocean for seven miles into the Limon Bay which is a dredged area. This area of the canal goes for eleven and one half mile until it reaches the Gatun locks. These three locks rise ships eighty five feet into Gatun Lake. From there to the Culebra Cut is twenty three miles. The cut goes for eight miles and is only five hundred feet wide. Then the Pedro Miguel single lock lowers ships thirty one feet. Next there is a one mile lake to the Miraflores locks. The two locks drop ships down a total of 54 feet. Then the final seven mile dredge to the Bay of panama.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Gatun Lake, Panama Canal, Canal Panama, De Lesseps, West Indies, Thousands Steam, Canal Apart, Pedro Miguel, John Wallace, Canal Company, panama canal, yellow fever, canal panama, plan canal panama, de lesseps, plan canal, steam shovels, completion canal, john wallace, oct 2000, john stevens, 16 oct 2000, vicomte ferdinand de, french pull panama, cause yellow fever,
Approximate Word count = 2660
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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