Panama Canal: The Eighth Wonder of the World1998

Narrator:
Finally, on May 20, 1913, steam shovel 222 and 230 meet at the bottom of Culebra Cut. The digging is over. The last concrete is laid at the locks ten days later. For thousands of men, the end of the most important work of their lives is fast approaching.

S.P. Verner:
[in his memoirs] We have seen men grow down here, as well as concrete walls and mighty iron structures. They see how great the work of their hands has made them into men. Whose life on earth is hardly to be found elsewhere. How they have fought the greatest battle of peacetime to a finish and stand now wondering somewhat, how they did it?

Narrator:
In September, another milestone is reached. Culebra Cut is filled with water from Gatun Lake. There remains just one stretch of earth that prevents the canal from being continuous. When a temporary dike at Gamboa is blown up, the Culebra Cut is joined to Gatun lake. A few days later, the first water enters Miraflores Locks on the Pacific side. On August 15, 1914, the USS Ancon makes the first complete passage through the canal in 9 hours and 40 minutes. Transit through the waterway is officially open to the world. A dream of the ages has become a reality. The canal is finished - under budget and ahead of schedule. So well-planned was the fundamental design of the Panama Canal, and the operation of its locks, that for the next 85 years they remain unchanged. Since the canal opened, it has seen 700,000 vessels pass by. It has profoundly influenced the movement of people & the fortunes of the world. The Panama Canal has indeed united the globe. Just as the Spanish, the French and the Americans had wanted for 400 years. Although Theodore Roosevelt never saw the canal, his words echo in its completion.

President Theodore Roosevelt:
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much, nor suffer much. Because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat.