The History Of The Panama Canal

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America instead tried to interest groups in the United States and
Europe in building a canal, and it became the subject of debate in the US
Congress. The discovery of gold in California in 1848, and the rush of
would-be miners stimulated US interest in digging the canal. Various
surveys made between 1850 and 1875 indicated that only two routes were
practical, the one across Panama and that across Nicaragua. In 1876 an
international company was organized; two years later it obtained a
concession from the Colombian government (Panama was then part of Colombia)
to dig a canal across the isthmus.
The international company failed, and in 1880 a French company was
organized by Ferdinand Marie de Lesseps, the builder of the Suez Canal. But
his company went bankrupt in 1889. But US interest in an Atlantic-Pacific
canal continued. In 1899 the US Congress created an Isthmian Canal
Commission to examine the possibilities of a Central American canal and to
recommend a route. The ...

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