1925 Owens Pictorial Bird's-Eye View Map of the Panama Canal

This is a 1925 Charles H. Owens pictorial bird's-eye view map of the Panama Canal. Owens was the first civilian artist to fly over the canal, offering him a unique perspective and understanding of the canal, resulting in this view.

A Closer Look

Overlooking the Canal from above the Pacific, this view illustrates the Panama Canal in detail. Dotted and dashed lines highlight the dredged canal, which varies from 5 miles to 500 feet wide in parts of Gatun Lake. The three lock systems (the Gatun Locks, Pedro Miguel Lock, and Miraflores Locks) are illustrated and identified with short captions. The Panama Railroad runs from Colon and Cristobal across the isthmus to Panama City. Insets detail the function of the Gatun Locks, the importance of the watershed to Gatun Lake and the Canal, the Gatun Spillway, and the distance saved by traveling through the canal instead of around Cape Horn.

The Panama Canal

The potential for bridging the narrow isthmus of Panama to link the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans had been conceived long before the completion of the canal, but the hurdles standing in the way of such a connection were formidable, including dense jungle, mountains, and tropical diseases. The first major link across the isthmus was the Panama Railroad, built by a group of American investors in the early 1850s to facilitate the California Gold Rush.

The first proper attempt to build an interoceanic canal was the vision of the French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps. Lesseps had successfully excavated the Suez Canal and saw the construction of the Panama Canal as a grander and more lucrative next project. He incorporated the Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique on March 3, 1881, which purchased a controlling stake in the existing railroad. Unprepared for the jungle climate, all progress was soon mired by disease, poor planning, political posturing, fraud, and bankruptcy. The Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique was dissolved by a French bankruptcy court on February 4, 1889, a development that became a major political scandal, largely because many French legislators had been investors in the company.

5 years later, in 1894, the company's assets were reorganized under new investors as Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama. This organization immediately began new plans to resume excavations, including producing detailed new maps of the project. Ultimately, the French lost control of the canal project to the United States. In 1903, the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty between Panama and the United States granted the U.S. canal-building rights and the sole right to operate and control the Canal Zone. The Compagnie Nouvelle du Canal de Panama sold its holdings (including the railroad) to the United States in 1904, supplanting an earlier failed American venture to build a canal in Nicaragua, and the Panama Canal officially opened under U.S. Management 10 years later in 1914.

Although the Canal was an engineering marvel several decades in the making, its opening was marred by the outbreak of World War I (1914 - 1918). The high death rate of workers (most of whom were from the Caribbean), especially from yellow fever and malaria, also casts a pall over the success of its construction. Still, the canal drastically cut travel times between the Pacific and Atlantic, was a major asset to the Allies during World War II, and helped Panama to become the wealthiest country in Central America on a per capita basis.

The Canal Zone remained a U.S. territory until the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaty began a gradual return of the territory to Panamanian sovereignty and management, a process completed in 2000. After coming under full Panamanian control, a third and wider lane of locks was constructed and opened in 2016, allowing larger 'Panamax' container ships to transit the Canal.

Publication History and Census

This map was drawn by Charles H. Owens and published by the Panama Railroad Company in 1925. We note 1 example in OCLC, located at the David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford University.