Afro-Panamanian
In 1904 when the construction of the Panama Canal was taken over by the United States for the failure of the French company, will again resort to the West Indian worker. Although between 1904 and 1914 the vast majority of Afro-West Indians who arrived in Panama did a one-year contract with the idea of returning to their home islands once the offshore project, after construction of the canal many Afro-Antillean stayed in Panama. Afro-West Indians who remained in Panama many got jobs in the Canal Zone and became the largest immigrant group in Panama. On the subject of Afro-Antillean Panama, Leslie B. Rout said that when the canal was opened in 1914, some 20,000 African-West Indians remained in Panama.
William Henry Aspinwall
Following the Steamship Company, Aspinwall then promoted a railway in Panama. The project, which began in May 1850 and was later known as the Panama Canal Railway, was the first transcontinental railroad in the Americas and was built to provide a shorter and more secure path between the United States' East and West Coasts. When completed in 1855, the line was designated as an "inter-oceanic" railroad crossing as it connected ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The tropical rain forest terrain and outbreak of malaria and cholera, rendered its five year construction, at a cost of $8,000,000, a considerable engineering challenge, and required more than seven thousand workers drawn from "every quarter of the globe."