Panoramic View of the Panama Canal

This attractive black-and-white bird’s eye view shows a highly stylized perspective of the Panama Canal nearly a decade before it would open to shipping traffic. The waterway connecting the Pacific (foreground) and Atlantic (background) Oceans is winding lazily between the Bay of Panama and Limon Bay, bisected by the artificial Lake Bohio.

Numerous ships are shown passing through the five planned locks – there would ultimately be twelve total. Vague mountain ranges and numerous rivers give a scant reflection of the difficult working conditions. An inset in the upper right shows the truncated shipping route between New York and San Francisco made possible by the canal’s operations.

A list of statistics in the lower left emphasizes the enormity of the project, but still drastically underestimates the eventual outcome. For example, the latest cost estimate is placed at $200 million, when the actual construction cost would run to over $350 million.

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