CANAL TRANSIT, Part 4, Pedro Miguel to Gold Hill

When you exit the lock at Pedro Miguel, you are technically in Gatun Lake, 84 feet above sea level. The feel is more of a slack water river though, because the whole thing isn't very wide. This stretch of Canal is now called the Gaillard Cut (originally it was the Culebra Cut) and it was by far the most difficult part of the Canal to dig. When you see old photographs of the digging of the Canal, it is likely they are from this area of about six miles.

The first great visual is of the Centennial Bridge (also called the Millennium Bridge), a striking suspension bridgebut with a single web of cables from each tower, rather than the double row as on the Golden Gate and most other suspension bridges. The single row attaches between the lanes of the roadway. An end view makes it look as if the bridge is almost hanging on nothing. None of the literature I have tells how long the clear span is so I will guess that it is about 1,500 feet long. The entire bridge is about 3,500 feet long.

Also in the first photo, you can see how excavations are terraced rather than sloped. Apparently sloped cuts continue to erode and can't be held in place. The terraces are like giant steps with risers and flat areas so the runoff from rain can be controlled better.

Way back when we first started the transit I showed a photo of a huge red and white crane in the lock ahead of us at Miraflores. The crane is called Titan and it has an interesting history.
Titan is about 340 feet tall. If you enlarge the photo you can see the operator's station just below the top of the first red section. I don't think there's an elevator so it is quite a hike just to get to the levers. It will lift about 350,000 pounds.

Titan and either two or three identical cranes were built by Hitler's Germany in the 1930's. Nothing I read tells what they were used for or even if the Germans ever used them. After the war, the Allies took them as war booty. One version says that one each went to America, Great Britain, France, and Russia. Another version says that there were three and one each went to America, Great Britain, and Russia. If there were four, there is no record of what happened to the one that was attributed to France. Of the three, the one that the British took capsized on the way across the English Channel and was lost. The one the Russians took has a more murky outcome, the most interesting being that they took it apart to ship it home and then couldn't figure out how to put it back together again. Anyway, those two are lost. Titan was taken to the Port of Long Beach, California. Nothing I've read tells how that was done but it must have been at least partially disassembled. It spent about fifty years in use around the Port. If you remember the Spruce Goose being in Long Beach and then being moved to Portland, you might have seen Titan lift the SG out of the harbor so it could be readied to moved to Portland. There are also some very interesting photos of Titan working on aircraft carriers, etc. Beam up Titan Port of Long Beach or Titan Panama Canal for great photos., etc. There is also a Titan in Australia but not this Titan. Anyway, about 1996 or so, the Port of Long Beach was closed as a Navy yard and Titan was either sold or given to the Panama Canal Authority. It was placed on a lowboy-like transport ship, a ship that sinks itself so its deck is deep enough under the water that things like Titan can be floated aboard and then lifted as the ship raises itself by pumping out the water used to sink it. Also, about exactly the same as a dry dock works except that the ship can haul stuff around. Titan was hauled to the Canal and is now used to lift the lock doors when that chore is needed.

Just behind Titan in the Photo above is "Contractor Hill" or "Gold Hill". The Canal between this hill on the east and the ridge on the west are not only Panama's continental divide in this area but also the single most challenging part of the canal to dig.

The digging was so hard that even now, almost 100 years later, the new locks and new dredging will not change the width of the Canal here. Rather, the channel will be deepened more vertically. The next photo is of the west side of the Canal. I failed to get a photo of both sides in one frame so you can estimate the height of the hill before the cut was done. Much of Contractor hill is now in the Pacific Ocean, having been hauled there on railroad flat cars and scraped off to make the Amador Causeway and to enlarge the islands at its ocean end.
The last photo here is of yet another car carrier in the cut off of Contractor Hill. This thousand foot long ship appears to have plenty of room to get through the cut but it's definitely one way traffic with a tugboat at the stern helping to navigate. By the way, you are looking at the bow (front) of the car carrier.