California: Part 2

• Kelsey Taylor

• History 141

Panama Canal

• 50 mile shortcut to the pacific that changes history

• begun in the 1880s- remarkable ingenuity

• Panama was the most difficult and dangerous place at that time

• canal isnt just merely a trench all at sea level, ts a series of locks that raise and lower the ships to the appropriate levels

• locks are like a giant water elevator or water steps which lift ships a total of 85 feet

• Suez canal creation was cause for great jubilation 10 years earlier

• Ferdinand Lessups: the engineer of the Suez canal, wanted to take on the panama project as well

• Gaudin Delepinay: says a canal dug at sea level is doomed

• • comes up with and describes a plan with locks but the people dont believe him, their trust is with Lessups

Panama Canal

• 1st step- cutting a path out of the jungle vegetation by hand, calculated the amount of excavation that needed to done then started digging

• many engineers died of smallpox, typhoid, snake bites, food poisoning, malaria, yellow fever yet still others followed, all for the glory of France

• DeLessups was doubted as to whether he was a canal or grave digger

• French engineers were taught to solve problems by computation not improvisation

• money ran out, the size of the task was too great

• French did about 1/3 of the job, considered the pioneers

• Roosevelt became the president of the United States and had many aspirations, including taking over the Panama Canal project

• Theodore Stevens came to FDR with a new lock system that seemed like it might work for his new project

• simple gravity would be the force at work with this new idea

Panama Canal

• the project initially intended for ships became the biggest railroad undertakings of all time

• Dam at the Chagras River made the biggest manmade river in the world

• yellow fever was eradicated

• Roosevelt went to Panama to check on the progress and it was the 1st time a president had left the country while still in office

• Stevens quit and Roosevelt then appointed a man who couldnt quit, Colonel Washington Goethals

• workmen came from Barbados but got paid well

• more explosive power was used blasting through Panama than all the wars the U.S. had fought up till then

• the massive amounts of rain made the mountains start to slide

Panama Canal

• locks were constructed in 36 foot sections

• end to end, the locks were 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide

• in 1913, when the last concrete was being poured, whole towns were being taken apart like stage sets

• the Canal would provide its own power

• Panama became an attraction site for tourists

• grand opening: August 15, 1914- finished ahead of schedule and it cost less than estimated

• complete 50 mile crossing takes approximately 9 hours

• Canal remains one of the busiest sea lanes in the world

• as of January 1, 2000 the canal belongs to Panama

• guaranteed to stay an open waterway to all nations

• U.S. has the right to protect and defend that neutrality

Los Angeles Aquaduct

• Mulholland envisioned a city like Dublin which was where he grew up

• Los Angeles never really had a reason to be there: no minerals, no metals or forests

• also lacked water, had been an area of perpetual drought

• 1878- Mulholland arrived from Ireland

• found work as a ditch digger in the towns delapitated water system

• climbed the ranks and found himself superintendent of the LA water system

• the huge growing city had sucked dry the tiny Los Angeles River, its only source of water

Los Angeles Aquaduct

• tried to make Los Angeles live within is means but growth sabotaged everything he did

• knew the city would either have to stop growing or he would have to find a new source of water

• was told of the Owens River which was 200 miles away

• • Mulholland set out there and was impressed by the valley and knew that water could sustain LA for the next century

• • became an empire builder- set out to move the whole river to Los Angeles

• • problem was that the farmers owned it- Mulholland quietly bought water rights so farmers wouldnt fully know what was going on

Los Angeles Aquaduct

• new river route would pass through San Fernando valley

• after all the land was bought, the citizens then had to decide if they wanted to pay for the aqueduct to be built

• voted 10:1 to pay for Mulhollands river

• with the law and the president on his side, he set out to build his aqueduct

• Mulholland set out to engineering a project the world had never seen

Los Angeles Aqueduct

• took 5 years to build

• struggles included: no water, extreme heat and cold

• aqueduct carrie 4 times more water than Los Angeles could use

• that water created the contemporary LA

• aqueduct ended up irrigating San Fernando valley as well

• L.A. was the most productive farm country in America

• Mulholland became the highest paid public employee in Californa