—In
1903, Teddy Roosevelt fomented a revolution with a little
gunboat diplomacy, separated Panama from Colombia and the Canal Zone
from the Panamanians, and sent a new team into Panama to succeed
where the French had ‘failed’.
Politics and bureaucracy in Washington almost scuttled his
effort, but by 1907, Army engineers and public health officers
had organized the task. Yellow fever and malaria were eradicated
with new knowledge that understood the vectors of the disease through
man and mosquitoes. The
engineering marvel of the locks, Gatun Lake and the Gaillard Cut thru
the mountains opened in 1914 and is essentially the canal in use today.