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Rails Across Panama Building of the Panama Railroad 1849-1855 Joseph Schott DJ
Rails Across Panama Building of the Panama Railroad 1849-1855 By Joseph Schott
Hard cover with Dust Jacket (has damage)
Copyright 1967 FIRST printing
224 Pages
CONTENTS
IThe Barrier1
IIThe Dream of Kings7
IIIThe Atlantic Terminus19
IVThe Golden Chimera31
VThe Rise of the Derienni45
VIThe Rival Route65
VIIThe Hangman85
VIIIThe Familiar Toot1o1
IXThe Mad Hatter's March115
XThe Rubicon Is Passed!139
XIThe Canal Nightmare155
XIIBeyond the Rubicon175
XIIIThe Last Land Pirate189
BIBLIOGRAPHY209
INDEX 215
ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustrations will be found following pages 114 and 146.
The narrow curve of the Isthmus of Panama has long been an avenue of adventurous passage between the great oceans. Fifty years before the Panama Canal was built, a group of American businessmen financed a successful railroad across the Isthmus. Rails Across Panama tells the fascinating and little known story of this dream to break through to the West.
John L. Stephens, a New York financier, first began the study of canal and railroad routes in 1839, and by 1849 Stephens and William Aspinwall had incorporated the Panama Railroad Company. Need for a swift and safe passage across the strip was pressing; gold awaited in California.
Working from the insect- and reptile-infested island of Manzanillo off Navy Bay on the east coast, Engineer George Totten slowly pushed the rails forward. The filling of swamps was only the first task. One of the construction workers reported to Totten: "Three days ago I made a test sounding here and found solid earth at one hundred eighty-five feet. Since then I've dumped nearly four thousand pounds of rock here. I just made another test and the sounding still shows one hundred eighty-five feet."
The Derienni, bandits who held up travelers and postal workers, some laden with gold on the return trip from California, were a constant nightmare. The Railroad Company was forced to hire a private police force to deal with the cutthroats. Along the route, gamblers, con men, merchants and prostitutes set up shop to amuse and fleece the workers.
In January of 1855 the first train made the coast-to-coast crossing. Thousands of lives had been lost to cholera, general fatigue and the Derienni. Over eight million dollars was spent in construction. Completion of the American transatlantic railroad system in 1869 led to a gradual withdrawal of business from the Panama Railroad, but in the five years ending in 1860 it had carried almost half a billion dollars in California gold and one hundred thousand bags of U. S. mail without a single loss.
Joseph Schott not only has made this little known story available for the first time, but has endowed his narrative with a liveliness and flavor which allows the large and varied cast of characters to emerge with all their original color and excitement.
Joseph L. Schott is the successful author of The Ordeal of Samar, a chronicle of the 1901 Philippine insurrection against American troops, and of Above and Beyond. A contributor of articles on military history to mass-market magazines, Mr. Schott is a resident of San Antonio, Texas, and has been active in government service.
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