We were on the ship at 5 a.m. on the bow as we approached the Gatun Locks at dawn — watching the ship being raised 85 feet in three chambers, inches from the lock walls, with the mules (little trains) pulling us through. The narrator on the bow commentary was riveting the whole day, and I learned the French first broke ground here on January 20, 1882, driven by the same dream that would ultimately claim 20,000 lives before they surrendered to yellow fever and bankruptcy. When the United States acquired the project on February 23, 1904, and began work that May 4th, they conquered disease first — mosquitoes and medicine before dynamite and dirt.

On August 15, 1914, the steamship SS Ancon became the first vessel to officially transit these waters — 50 miles from deep water to deep water, the culmination of over $350 million (the most expensive American project to that date) and 5,600 more American lives added to the French toll. Standing here more than a century later, gliding through what 25,600 workers never lived to see, I felt the full measure of what this passage cost.

Sailed through the Gaillard Cut — the narrowest part — with jungle pressing in on both sides, howler monkeys roaring just as they did when men carved through this mountain with steam shovels and dynamite. Saw crocodiles sunning on the banks, toucans flying overhead, and the Bridge of the Americas at the Pacific side marking the end. This waterway they wrested from the earth was named one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World. After Panama gained full control on December 31, 1999, they honored that legacy with an ambitious expansion — completed in June 2016 to welcome the colossal Neopanamax ships that now share these locks with us.