[Panama Canal]

[Music] the Panama Canal 22 years ago first we go to the bottom of things and find ourselves sidetracked on the floor of the world famous Gallard cut which perhaps is more familiar to you under the name of KRA cut now we are traveling along some of the 160 Mi of track that were laid down on the bottom of the canal track that constantly had to be shifted as the shovels dug away at mother earth right at this spot in the picture modern Grace liners float on a watery bridge that rises 45 ft from where these rails are in the distance now the lines of tracks are to be seen and also one gets an idea of the width of the canal originally specified to be 200 ft in width at the bottom President Roosevelt TR that was order the dimensions change to 300 ft costing the United States an extra 13 millions of dollars and well worth it locco and white labor were employed in the building of the canal the white labor being called the gold standard the native labor the rest here's one of the Native signalmen the government kept one of these men flag in hand at every switch in KRA cut it had to for every minute and a half during the peak of activity in Cabra a train loaded with dirt rumbled on its way to Gaton Dam and locks and despite that it was almost impossible to keep enough empty cars on hand to tax the capacity of the 101 steam shovels used we don't want to bore you with figures but in passing we might mention that the government used over 300 locomotives and over 4,000 cars of rolling stock in this work now we are approaching the most famous part of the calra cut First a full view of the cut showing something of its depth with the steam shovels biting away at it and each chewing off as high as 7 cubic yards at a bite these particular shovels are working on the famous karacha slide karacha in Spanish means cockroach and this slide was particularly annoying and disturbing it was a so-called wet slide caused by the rains and the slipping of soft wet dirt on a hard layer of rock underneath the karacha in October 197 slid right across the bottom of the cut buried two shovels and for 10 days moved an average of 14 ft every 24 hours but that was just one of the many things that came up in the building of the canal that were overcome with little fuss in puror and all the time the shovels kept nibbling away this is one of the locomotives used to haul the dirt drains you might add as we wait for one of these many dirt drains each with 21 loaded cars to pass that the canal has experienced some 20 odd slides all told totaling 25 million yards of Earth and covering 220 Acres of cut and destroying 200 Mi of track some of these slides came during the dry season and they were caused by faults in the Earth breakes occasioned because of the removal of sidewalls and The Cutting of the canal in short there was nothing to keep the sidewalls from expanding into the cut which they promptly did a few moments ago we said that the government used 101 shovels some of them were left by the French who under DPS builder of the Suz Canal first started work back in 1882 these however are good old American shovels they are working here just past the sheer face of Cabra at the lowest point of the cut the very real bottom of the Panama Canal the loading of the empty dirt trains is done very quickly with those big Dippers and don't worry the shovels always dig themselves out these objects are some of the 553 Rock drills that were used for setting the dynamite shots 6 million pounds of explosives a year were used in The Cutting of this gigantic ditch during its 9M length that would make a real Chinese New Year's party wouldn't it in the distance now are to be seen two famous spots on the left is Gold Hill and on the right contractor's Hill is said that it was from the top of Gold Hill that Balboa first saw the Pacific ocean but that was a long time ago and well you know how people will talk at each end of that suspension bridge around 1910 and 12 there were a couple of sizable little communities contractor's camps they were but with the completion of the work they were demolished and not a vestage remains of their presence this looks like a desert stream in early spring but it's really the first water ever to enter the Panama Canal proper finding its way into it from the shagas river the shagas Basin is now filled by Gaton Lake formed by the man-made l lying Gaton Dam at the Atlantic end of the canal and once again we view the face of KRA cut showing how it looked back there in 1912 at its highest point they took 37 million cubic yards of dirt out of Cabra and the cost well it's difficult to get actual figures but the entire Canal had an estimated cost of some $375 millions of dollars yes we know that all steam shovels look alike just the saying this one is distinctive for this big brute was the shovel that dug its way through the entire length of the canal from one end the other and while the shovels dig we'll turn to the place where all those dirt trains were going Gaton we're standing on the top of the dam looking South toward Gaton Lake in the distance you saw the guide Pier along which eastbound ships tie up before they are to enter the first of the three Gaton locks through which the ships are lowered 85 ft to the level of the Atlantic the camera swings in slow Panorama and on the hill in the distance the administration buildings come into view it was in these buildings that all the orders were formed imated for the building of the great katoon dam and locks this bridge likee structure is one of the two emergency locks should anything go wrong with the regular lock Gates one of these could be swung across the lock in question and then it would drop big steel plates to form a supplementary gate and here is one of the pair of upper locks look at the size of it 1,000 ft long 110 ft wide and 83 ft deep 2 yards of concrete were used in the Kon end of the canal and the work took from 196 to 1911 now a clear view of all six locks is shown just a few weeks prior to their completion here is the other emergency lock the regular lock Gates can be closed in 2 minutes although they weigh from 4 to 700 tons each and to give you a better idea of the size of these locks look at the small figure of the man in the middle distance there's the Panama Canal from the underside one of the greatest pieces of man-made construction ever known first talked of in 1825 when Henry Clay appointed a committee to look into the idea and through which the first ship passed on August 3rd 1914 and opened officially on August 15th the same year the Panama Canal a monument to Colonel gettles General gorg and the American people