Panama Canal, August 24, 1909
On today’s date, August 24 in 1909, workers started pouring the first concrete for the Panama Canal under the leadership of US Army Major George Washington Goethals of the US Army Corps of Engineers. The first concrete was laid at Gatun by the Philadelphia-based company Day & Zimmermann for the locks at the eastern end of the canal between Limon Bay, which opens into the Caribbean, and Gatun Lake in the interior. By the time the canal’s locks opened in 1914, they were one of the greatest concrete engineering feats ever to be undertaken until construction of the Hoover Dam, in the 1930s.
To commemorate this undertaking, we present a few images of the Gatun Locks construction from Panama and the Canal in Picture and Prose by American journalist and military writer Willis J. Abbot, published by the Syndicate Publishing Company in 1913.The photographs were produced by the New York photography company Underwood & Underwood, and the frontispiece map was printed by L. L. Poates Engraving Co, in New York. The watercolor reproduced on the cover is by American maritime artist Gordon Grant.
