After the discovery of gold in California in 1849, many travelers chose the 47.5 mile (76.5 kilometer) isthmus as a cheaper, quicker and less dangerous route to the gold rush than crossing the U.S. Early treasure-seekers traveled across Panama by boat when they could and walked when they couldn’t; to catch a northbound ship on the western coast of Panama to the California gold fields.
Based on the traffic across the isthmus, a company from the United States began work on a Panama Railroad and when completed in 1855; it was the only transcontinental rapid transit in the western hemisphere. The city of Colon began as an island boomtown, with the railroad, growing and then emptying, as travelers came and went. Today, the Panama Railroad terminus is inside the Colon Free Trade Zone compound, and still has a busy role in transportation across Panama.
How many actually died building the railroad and the canal is unknown, they were taken by yellow fever, cholera, dysentery, and smallpox; and no records were kept, for the most part. In the end, the companies discovered that for heavy work in the tropics, no race of men could match West Indian men. Slow-moving, accustomed to heat, resistant to the fevers, these cheerful and humble people played an honorable part in the realization of mankind’s dreams on the Isthmus.
1909 Arrival of SS. Ancon with 1500 laborers
from Barbados, at the Cristobal Port in Colon
Many Colon residents are the descendants of migrant laborers from the English-speaking Caribbean, brought in to dig the canal. It is still surprising to realize that the actual builders of the Panama Canal included only 357 Panamanians and over 20,000 Barbadians. It is dubious though that those people were offered a ride home, after the work was done.
For more information about Panama travel, tourism, and locations contact Panama Travel Group today.
i...@panamatravelgroup.com
+507-202-1111 (Panama) | 1-786-539-4731 (USA)
Posted by Mike | Under Colon Panama
Today, the city of Colon is not a safe tourist destination. But the government of Panama has big plans that will change that, soon. For now, there is a good reason Colon was chosen as the site to represent war-torn Haiti for the latest ‘Bond’ film. The Caribbean port of the Panama Canal has been compared to some of the world’s most rundown cities.
The current condition of Colon makes a kind of weird sense, when you understand some of the reasons the people of Colon have never developed a sense of community. Primarily, because of a century and a half long parade of huge numbers of people from all over the world, who lived, worked and died in Colon; while planning on going somewhere else. Leaving in Colon a composite society made up of people from all over the world, who had very little in common.
Today Colon suffers from a long-term combination of crime, poverty and unemployment. Of those 200,000 residents who remain, only one in three have a proper job. But it wasn’t always that way. Front Street in Colon is about six blocks of once elegant French Colonial style buildings that are disintegrating, primarily since many of them were built in the late 1800’s. At that time, enterprising businessmen brought work to Colon, and the laborers to do it, constructing buildings on the then Island of Manzanillo with lovely turn of the century buildings designed for use as hotels, restaurants and other businesses.
Now, amid the neo-classical ruins, older residents fend off afternoon boredom with booze and playing dominoes, while the younger residents entertain themselves with gang violence, petty theft and high divorce rates. Yet the ebb of fortunes in the life of this city are shifting, enterprise has found Colon, again. How can the residents of Colon be encouraged to believe in the flow of fortune and to have enough hope to become partners in enterprise, when enterprise has abandoned them repeatedly in the past?
For more information about Panama travel, tourism, and locations contact Panama Travel Group today.
i...@panamatravelgroup.com
+507-202-1111 (Panama) | 1-786-539-4731 (USA)
Posted by Mike | Under Colon Panama
