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After more than a decade of construction, the United States officially opened the Panama Canal to shipping traffic on August 15, 1914. Construction workers cut and blasted their way through a narrow band of land known as the Isthmus of Panama. When opened, the 51-mile waterway connected the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and allowed ships to bypass the treacherous passage around South America's Cape Horn and slashed approximately 8,000 miles from the voyage between the East and West coasts of the United States.
After a decade of backbreaking labor, the United States officially opened the Panama Canal to shipping traffic on August 15, 1914.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Following the discovery of gold in California in 1848, transport companies began to seriously investigate routes across the narrow Isthmus of Panama to avoid the lengthy and dangerous route around South America's Cape Horn. In the late 1840s, steamships carried cargo between ports on the East Coast of the United States and Panama. Wagons, pack animals, and manpower carried the cargo over a land route to the Isthmus' west coast ports where it was loaded on ships bound for California. In 1855, the Panama Railroad opened between the east and west coasts of the Isthmus. The railway greatly reduced the time and need for manpower to haul cargo over land, but engineers were already eyeing the possibility of constructing a water route that would allow ships to pass directly across the Isthmus without loading and unloading its cargo.
After successfully opening the Suez Canal connecting the Mediterranean and Red seas in 1869, French surveyors and engineers began exploring canal routes across the Isthmus of Panama. In 1878, French naval officer Lucien Napoleon Bonaparte Wyse signed a treaty with Columbia—which owned the Panamanian isthmus—to construct a canal along the present-day canal route stretching from Limon Bay on the Caribbean Sea to Panama City on the Pacific Ocean. After 18 years and the loss of more than 20,000 laborers to accidents and disease, the French effort to blast a canal through the isthmus went bankrupt.
The United States was keenly interested in the French effort to construct a canal through the isthmus and their studies other routes, including one spanning the width of Nicaragua. Following the French bankruptcy and a second foundering effort to continue the project, President Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary of State John M. Hay began negotiations to purchase the canal tract across the isthmus from Columbia. Althouh the United States signed a purchase treaty, the Columbian Senate rejected the agreement in March 1903. In response, the Roosevelt administration supported the Panamanian rebellion that declared independence from Columbia on November 3, 1903, sent the U.S. Navy to block Columbian intervention, and formally recognized the new nation of Panama on November 6, 1903. That same day, Panama's ambassador to the United States Philippe Bunau-Varilla signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty granting the United States the right to indefinite access and defense of the Panama Canal Zone—an area extending 5 miles on each side of the canal, but excluding the cities of Colon and Panama City..
Within months of Panama's independence, the United States agreed to purchase the French canal equipment and take over the canal workforce and existing excavations. It established the Isthmian Canal Commission on February 26. 1904, to oversee the American claim to Panama Canal Zone and conducted the first census of the new territory. In 1904, the population of the Panama Canal Zone was reported to be 9,742. Additional censuses were conducted in 1906 by the U.S. Sanitary Department of Panama and in 1908 by the Canal Commission. These showed that as the American effort to construct the canal got underway, the population of the Canal Zone grew from 22,137 to 50,008. In 1912, a complete enumeration of the Canal Zone, including Isthmian Canal Commission employees and laborers, Panama Railroad employees, and U.S. military personnel living in Panama (both inside and outside the American-controlled Canal Zone) was conducted on February 1, 1912. That census counted a population of 62,810.
Under the direction of chief engineers John Frank Stevens (1905–1907) and George Washington Goethals (1907–1914), the monumental task of excavating approximately 240 million cubic yards of soil to construct the 51-mile canal across the Isthmus of Panama was completed 2 years ahead of schedule. Construction of the canal cost the United States about $500 million ($15.2 billion today). Whereas the 18-year French effort to build the Panama Canal saw more than 22,000 laborers die from construction injuries and disease, U.S. Army Chief Sanitary Officer William C. Gorgas reduced the official death toll from construction injuries and diseases like yellow fever and malaria to approximately 5,600 during the 10-year American construction effort.
A grand opening ceremony for the Panama Canal was planned for August 15, 1914, but the start of World War I forced a more muted celebration. Few dignitaries attended the opening as Chief Enginneer Goethals haled the cement-carrying cargo ship S.S. Ancon as the first vessel to officially transit the canal. Upon its completion, the Panama Canal cut up to 5 months of travel time and 8,000 nautical miles off the journey between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In its first year of operation, approximately 1,000 ships transited the canal.
Beginning in 1920, the U.S. Census Bureau enumerated residents of the Panama Canal Zone at the same time as the stateside decennial census. Under the supervision of the territory's U.S. governor, census takers counted 22,858 people in the Panama Canal Zone in 1920. The Census Bureau continued to enumerate the canal zone's population through the 1970 Census, when it counted 44,198 military and civilian inhabitants. In accordance with the terms of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties, the Panama Canal Zone no longer existed as an entity under American control and the Census Bureau ended operations there on October 1, 1979. The United States retained the right to defend the canal from any threat that could interfere with the ability of ships from all nations to use the waterway. On December 31, 1999, Panama assumed complete control of the canal's operation. Today, approximately 13,000 to 14,000 ships carrying 500 million tons of cargo transit the canal every year.
You can learn more about the history of the Panama Canal and the Census Bureau's operations in the canal zone, U.S. territories, and Island Areas using census data and records. For example:
The United States conducted censuses in the Panama Canal Zone from 1904 to 1970. In 1950, census takers used enumeration district maps like this one to count 52,300 people in the Canal Zone.
Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.
The United States conducted censuses as of the first Monday of August from 1790 through 1820.
In the decades that followed, "Census Day" was in June, January, and April. Most recently, the population of the United States was 331,449,281 as of April 1, 2020.
The United States began collecting foreign trade data in 1790 when American customs officials inspected shipments and accessed duties on the goods transiting the nation's ports. Customs duties were the nation's primary source of income and the secretary of the Treasury published these data in The American State Papers.
Beginning in 1821, the Treasury Department published annual data in Commerce and Navigation of the United States. In 1866, Congress created the Bureau of Statistics to compile and publish these data.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Maritime Administration.
In 1903, the Bureau of Statistics moved to the Department of Commerce. Twenty years later, Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover consolidated all foreign trade data reporting into the Division of Foreign Trade Statistics of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. In 1941, the Division of Foreign Trade Statistics moved to the Census Bureau.
Today, the Census Bureau works closely with the U.S. Treasury Department, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis to collect foreign trade statistics.
For example, the Census Bureau published data in May 2024 statistics showing that the value of imported goods and services was $336.7 billion and exports totaled 261.7 billion. Imports from Mexico ($43.9 billion), South Korea ($12.3 billion) and Italy ($7 billion) were the highest on record, while the quantity of imported crude oil (212 million barrels) was the highest since July 2019.
Largest export product categories (year-to-date) included: Transportation Equipment ($105.5 billion); Chemicals ($105.1 billion); Oil and Gas ($75 billion); Machinery, Except Electronic Products ($58.1 billion); Petroleum and Coal Products ($51.8 billion; and Computers and Electronic Products ($51.2 billion).
Learn more about the how we collect import and export data and the availability of foreign trade statistics at our International Trade webpage.
Three years after Theodore Roosevelt graduated from Harvard University, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him to the U.S. Civil Service Commission in 1889. He served on the board of the New York City Police Commissioners beginning in 1895 and President William McKinley appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1897.
He accepted the Republican Party's nomination for New York governor and defeated Augustus Van Wyck in 1898. When Vice President Garret Hobart died in 1899, Republicans nominated him as William McKinley running mate in the 1900 U.S. Presidential Election. During that campaign Roosevelt's held hundreds of rallies to fire up crowds against Democrat William Jennings Bryan and running mate Adlai Stevenson. The McKinley-Roosevelt ticket won a decisive victory on November 6, 1900.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley at the Pan-American Exposition on September 6, 1901, and he died 8 days later. Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo, NY, where cabinet secretaries and dignitaries, including Secretary of War Elihu Root, Attorney General Philander Knox, and Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson, watched as U.S. District Court Judge John R. Hazel administered the oath of office to Theodore Roosevelt.
During his presidency, Roosevelt broke up monopolies; improved the safety of food and drugs; and conserved wilderness areas. On the international stage, he mediated a peace deal ending the Russo-Japanese War; helped avert conflict between Germany, France, and Great Britain over control of Morocco; and oversaw the settlement of disputed Alaskan borders.
Perhaps most importantly, Roosevelt supported the 1903 Panamanian rebellion against Columbia that secured a swath of land through the Isthmus of Panama for the construction of the Panama Canal.