The Path Between the Seas

by David McCullough

The dam was to be a man-made earthen hill a hundred feet high and it would create a lake some forty square miles in area, the largest artificial lake in the world. But the dam was also to have a masonry core that would extend farther below ground than the dam was high, and to achieve this, pneumatic caissons—for the foundations of the core—were to be sunk 128 feet below sea level, a depth far in excess of anything previously attempted. Did the commission’s entire Panama plan hang on the Bohio dam? Senator Harris asked. Yes, replied Walker. Everything depended on the Bohio dam, but the dam would not be the most difficult undertaking. The great cut through the spine of the Cordilleras would be more momentous still. It alone might take as much as eight years.