OASIS: The Creation of the Panama Canal

In one of the most ambitious engineering projects in history, in the early 1900s the United States constructed an aquatic path connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans across the newly created nation of Panama. The Americans completed what the French started. To do it, the Americans had to conquer disease, move massive amounts of earth, build an ingenious system of locks and even create a massive lake. Professor Blaine Davies who recently visited the Panama Canal explains how in spite of disease, politics and daunting civil engineering obstacles the canal was conceived, engineered and opened for ocean-to-ocean transit over a century ago.