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.
Gatun Dam
As described in History of the Panama Canal, the canal effort was begun by a French company (La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Interoceanique) in 1880 to 1889. With poor exploration of the options and with poor information of the costs the French company planned to construct a sea-level canal linking the two coasts. They initially thought they could do this for about $120 million. After spending about one billion Francs (about $300,000,000) losing about 22,000 workers and going bankrupt the French effort essentially ceased. A sea level canal would not have required the dam to be built but would have still required extensive provisions made to accommodate the ever-changing Chagres River flow. When the United States took over the wide Canal Zone and resumed building the canal on 4 May 1904 almost two years were spent in infra-structure preparation, mosquito abatement (the newly discovered vector spreading Yellow fever and Malaria), Panama Railroad improvements and planning before the work got up to full speed. After reviewing the options and costs, in 1906 a lock-based canal was decided upon and agreed to by President Theodore Roosevelt.