Panama Canal Facts

The Panama Canal is an engineering marvel that we find unbelievable!  Here are some things that might amaze you.

• Ships traveling between New York and San Francisco save 7,872 miles by using the Panama Canal instead of going around Cape Horn.
• The Atlantic entrance to the Canal is 22-1/2 miles west of the Pacific entrance.
• More than four and half million cubic yards of concrete went in to the construction of the locks and dams.
• Material originally excavated to build the Canal were put on to a train of flat cars, it would encircle the world four times.
• The locks of the Panama Canal are seven feet thick.
• Due to the reclining "S" shape of the Isthmus of Panama, while in Panama City, the sun rises from the Pacific Ocean
• The average seal level for the Atlantic and Pacific entrance is virtually the same. But since the tidal variation at the Pacific entrance can be up to 18 feet, a sea level canal would be faced with the problem of a current running northbound when the Pacific tide was high and a current running south bound when the tide was low.
• February 29, 1968 was the most transits on a single day with an amount of 65 ships crossing the isthmus.
• In June 1979 the U.S. Navy hydrofoil Pegasus made the fastest transit ever when it crossed the Panama Canal in record time of 2 hours and 41 minutes.
• Approximately 7,300 or nearly 92 percent of the work force of the Panama Canal is Panamanian.
• The 13,700 transit in 1996 carried more than 198 million long tons of cargo to ports throughout the world.
• More than 60,000,000 pounds of dynamite was used to excavate and construct the Panama Canal.
• The dam constructed across the Chagres River in Gatun created Gatun Lake, the largest man-made lake in the world at that time.
• The rock and soil excavated from Culebra cut was used to build the shell of the dam at Gatun on the Atlantic side.
• Since 1904 due to accidents and health problems, 5609 workers loss their life, constructing the Canal. 80% of them were Black and 350 were white Americans.
• On August 23, 1928 Richard Halliburton transit the Canal swimming , paying a toll of 36 cents since his weight was 150 pounds.
• The cruise ship Rhapsody of the Sea establish a toll record on 1997 when it paid 153,662.66 to cross the water-way.
• In 1963 the Panama Canal for the first time starts operating 24 hours, thanks to the introduction high mass fluorescent lighting.
• The Panama Canal in 1974 raises the toll rates for the first time since they were not breaking even. Excavation of the Canal was equal to digging a 10 feet trench deep by 55 wide from California to New York.