Panama: The Golden Isthmus

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In September 1513, Spanish conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa discovers the ‘South Sea’ and that Panama is a tantalisingly narrow isthmus. The transit route between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans quickly became the most important thoroughfare in the Spanish Empire and the focus of a fierce geo-political struggle.

Crossing the Isthmus using the Chagres River. With the discovery of gold in California, Panama – the quickest route from East to West US coast - was soon swarming with '49ers'.

Mapping the route for the Panama railroad through thick jungle and swamp. Built in five years between 1850 and 1855, it cost thousands of lives but made a fortune for its owners.

Members of an American surveying expedition in the Darién jungle, 1870. Building a canal had become part of the US’s ‘Manifest Destiny’. After thorough surveys of all the possible canal routes, the United States decided that the best was Nicaragua.