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- California: Part 2
- Kelsey Taylor
- History 141
- Panama Canal
- 50 mile shortcut to the pacific that changes history
- begun in the 1880s- remarkable ingenuity
- Panama was the most difficult and dangerous place at that time
- canal isnt just merely a trench all at sea level, ts a series of locks that raise and lower the ships to the appropriate levels
- locks are like a giant water elevator or water steps which lift ships a total of 85 feet
- Suez canal creation was cause for great jubilation 10 years earlier
- Ferdinand Lessups: the engineer of the Suez canal, wanted to take on the panama project as well
- Gaudin Delepinay: says a canal dug at sea level is doomed
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- comes up with and describes a plan with locks but the people dont believe him, their trust is with Lessups
- Panama Canal
- 1st step- cutting a path out of the jungle vegetation by hand, calculated the amount of excavation that needed to done then started digging
- many engineers died of smallpox, typhoid, snake bites, food poisoning, malaria, yellow fever yet still others followed, all for the glory of France
- DeLessups was doubted as to whether he was a canal or grave digger
- French engineers were taught to solve problems by computation not improvisation
- money ran out, the size of the task was too great
- French did about 1/3 of the job, considered the pioneers
- Roosevelt became the president of the United States and had many aspirations, including taking over the Panama Canal project
- Theodore Stevens came to FDR with a new lock system that seemed like it might work for his new project
- simple gravity would be the force at work with this new idea
- Panama Canal
- the project initially intended for ships became the biggest railroad undertakings of all time
- Dam at the Chagras River made the biggest manmade river in the world
- yellow fever was eradicated
- Roosevelt went to Panama to check on the progress and it was the 1st time a president had left the country while still in office
- Stevens quit and Roosevelt then appointed a man who couldnt quit, Colonel Washington Goethals
- workmen came from Barbados but got paid well
- more explosive power was used blasting through Panama than all the wars the U.S. had fought up till then
- the massive amounts of rain made the mountains start to slide
- Panama Canal
- locks were constructed in 36 foot sections
- end to end, the locks were 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide
- in 1913, when the last concrete was being poured, whole towns were being taken apart like stage sets
- the Canal would provide its own power
- Panama became an attraction site for tourists
- grand opening: August 15, 1914- finished ahead of schedule and it cost less than estimated
- complete 50 mile crossing takes approximately 9 hours
- Canal remains one of the busiest sea lanes in the world
- as of January 1, 2000 the canal belongs to Panama
- guaranteed to stay an open waterway to all nations
- U.S. has the right to protect and defend that neutrality
- Los Angeles Aquaduct
- Mulholland envisioned a city like Dublin which was where he grew up
- Los Angeles never really had a reason to be there: no minerals, no metals or forests
- also lacked water, had been an area of perpetual drought
- 1878- Mulholland arrived from Ireland
- found work as a ditch digger in the towns delapitated water system
- climbed the ranks and found himself superintendent of the LA water system
- the huge growing city had sucked dry the tiny Los Angeles River, its only source of water
- Los Angeles Aquaduct
- tried to make Los Angeles live within is means but growth sabotaged everything he did
- knew the city would either have to stop growing or he would have to find a new source of water
- was told of the Owens River which was 200 miles away
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- Mulholland set out there and was impressed by the valley and knew that water could sustain LA for the next century
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- became an empire builder- set out to move the whole river to Los Angeles
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- problem was that the farmers owned it- Mulholland quietly bought water rights so farmers wouldnt fully know what was going on
- Los Angeles Aquaduct
- new river route would pass through San Fernando valley
- after all the land was bought, the citizens then had to decide if they wanted to pay for the aqueduct to be built
- voted 10:1 to pay for Mulhollands river
- with the law and the president on his side, he set out to build his aqueduct
- Mulholland set out to engineering a project the world had never seen
- Los Angeles Aqueduct
- took 5 years to build
- struggles included: no water, extreme heat and cold
- aqueduct carrie 4 times more water than Los Angeles could use
- that water created the contemporary LA
- aqueduct ended up irrigating San Fernando valley as well
- L.A. was the most productive farm country in America
- Mulholland became the highest paid public employee in Californa