National Geographic: Adventures - Panama Canal: The Mountain and the Mosquito Page #5

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Monstrous T-shaped cantilever cranes

that can be seen from miles away float

plates of steel through the air.

More concrete-

four and a half million barrels-

than has ever been used in history

is poured into the locks.

Six million rivets are needed

to build the lock gates.

Gatun Lake, at 164 square miles,

would be the largest man-made lake

in the world.

And Gatun dam, made from the spoil

of the Culebra Cut,

is the largest in the world

to be made of earth.

It is a mile and a half long

and half a mile wide at its base.

The Canal is the work of more than

from 97 different countries.

Most would not live

to sail through it.

The final bill.

Over $600 million dollars.

In an age when a worker was fortunate

to earn a dollar a day.

The single greatest engineering

undertaking in American history.

Teddy Roosevelt never returns

to the Big Ditch

to see his dream brought to life.

He leaves office in 1909

and dies in 1919,

seven months before

America's Pacific Fleet

first passes through the Canal.

John Stevens finds another mountain

and another railway.

In 1917 he is sent to Russia by

President Woodrow Wilson

to reorganize the

Trans-Siberian Railway.

Not until 1937, at age 83,

does he return to Panama

to gaze upon his masterpiece.

He dies in North Carolina

six years later at age 90.

Only Dr. William Crawford Gorgas

sees America's work in Panama through

from start to end.

By the time he returns

to the United States,

he has completely eradicated

Yellow Fever

from the Canal Zone

and reduced malarial infection

to rates lower than most

American cities at the time.

The physician's work in Panama

brings him great public acclaim.

He is appointed Surgeon General,

a supreme honor for a country doctor

from Alabama.

He leads the American Medical

Services Corps to Europe

during the First World War.

In 1920 he dies a hero

and is given a state funeral.

One man battled mountains.

The other, the tiny bearers of death.

This is their monument.

The bridging of a continent.

The union of the seas.

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