The Panama Canal (Spanish: Canal de Panamá) is a man-made 48-mile (77 km) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a key conduit for international maritime trade. There are locks at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 metres (85 ft) above sea level.
France began work on the canal in 1881, but stopped due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project in 1904, and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. One of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken, the Panama Canal shortcut greatly reduced the time for ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, enabling them to avoid the lengthy, hazardous Cape Horn route around the southernmost tip of South America via the Drake Passage or Strait of Magellan.
Annual traffic has risen from about 1,000 ships in 1914, when the canal opened, to 14,702 vessels in 2008, for a total of 333.7 million Panama Canal/Universal Measurement System (PC/UMS) tons. By 2012, more than 815,000 vessels had passed through the canal.[2] It takes six to eight hours to pass through the Panama Canal.
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| Location of Panama between Pacific (bottom) and Caribbean (top), with canal at top center |
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| Pacific Side Entrance |
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| The water that is used to raise and lower vessels in the Canal is fed by gravity from Gatun Lake (pictured above) into each set of locks |
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| Roll-on/roll-off ships, such as this one pictured here at Miraflores locks, are among the largest ships to pass through the canal. |
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| SS Ancon passing through the canal on 15 August 1914, the first ship to do so |
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| USS Missouri passes through the canal in 1945. The Iowa-class Battleships were designed to be narrow enough to fit through. |
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