Two decades after Spanish explorer Vasco Nuñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513, King Charles I of Spain ordered a survey to see if it would possible to dig a canal across. The surveyors concluded that it would be impossible.
By the mid-19th century, the United States government began to consider building a canal across Central America. The California gold rush created increased demand for sea trade between the nation's Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Starting in 1869, U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant ordered surveyors to Central America to investigate possible canal routes through Panama, Nicaragua and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. A commission analyzed the three surveys and in 1876 named Nicaragua the best option, though serious construction never began there.
At the same time, France began building a canal through Panama, but the project was ultimately derailed by technical problems, spiraling costs and the deaths of thousands of workers, many from yellow fever and malaria. In 1902, the French convinced the United States and President Theodore Roosevelt to purchase its Panama assets.
Panama was a province of Colombia at the time and Colombia rejected a U.S. canal treaty. So with U.S. support, Panama declared its independence and the Hay-Bunau-Varilla canal treaty was ratified by both nations by February 1904.
Construction on the U.S.-built canal began May 4, 1904. Aided in no small part by new medical advances to control yellow fever and malaria, the U.S. team was able to send the first ship through the canal on August 15, 1914.
