What makes panama an ideal place for building a canal?

Answer 1

Nicaragua was the site chosen first, and the US began to build a canal there until the stock panic of 1893. Building in Nicaragua would have been less expensive at the time when France offered the semi built Panama Canal to anyone who would buy it. But Cromwell and Bunan-Varilla wanted America to choose Panama, so they got France to lower the price from $100 million down to $40 million. That made it the same cost as Nicaragua. They then used publicity to convince the American public that Panama was the better site, and to illuminate the problems with Nicaragua. In 1902, a legislative bill, selecting Panama as the canal site, passed the Senate and the House of Representatives and was signed by President Teddy Roosevelt.

Answer 2

Nicaragua was considered as a possible transcontinental canal site, but Panama was chosen instead largely due to lobbying by a French syndicate that owned large swaths of land in Panama and therefore had a vested interest in having the canal built there instead.

Recently, interest in a Nicaragua canal (in addition to the Panama canal) has been growing, due largely to the fact that the Panama canal is handling much more traffic than it was originally envisioned as allowing for and is nearing its maximum capacity even with the upgrades that have been performed. The Panama canal also imposes a maximum size limit on ships (due to the size of the locks), and a new canal built with modern ships in mind could potentially increase the size limit. Placing it in Nicaragua instead of Panama would not have much of an impact on traffic between say Japan and Europe, but would have a noticeable impact on traffic between New York and Los Angeles (every mile further north the canal is reduces the overall journey by about two miles, since ships bound from the East to the West coast of the US or vice versa have to sail south to the canal and then back north again on the other side).

Answer 3

Panama was a good choice for building a canal because it let the U.S send goods from one side of the ocean another.