An immense construction project is completed and so America celebrates in a city that had lately needed some construction itself. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
The Panama Canal was a massive project. It involved some wild political maneuverings to get control of the land. Some engineering challenges that must have seemed insurmountable. A massive requirement for labor in a hot, buggy tropical place at a time when it was no longer possible to have slaves do it. Just a massive challenge. A challenge that was by no means complete in 1913 when this stamp came out. The project was being handled so confidently that an international exhibition was scheduled to celebrate the successful completion. Imagine the egg on the face if the Panama project bogged down the way modern projects of any scale always seem to. The stamp was a success though because everything came off. Could even China pull that off now? I am confident the west could not. To the collector all these years later it might have been better for the stamp value had it been a failure.
The stamp today is issue A145, a 2 cent stamp issued by the United States in 1913. The four stamp issue was part of the build up to the Panama Pacific International Exposition scheduled for San Francisco in 1915. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1 used. A mint version of the 10 cent stamp of this issue is worth $700.
The stamp displays the Pedro Miguel locks. This was one of the more simple locks on the Pacific ocean side of the canal. This made sense both for fact that this lock was done early enough to be shown on the stamp and also since a Pacific lock is more in keeping with the Pacific theme of the Exposition. It must be remembered at the time power and population was mainly located in the East and the power shift to the west on a complete different but soon not so far separated ocean. I can see why this would generate so much excitement about the project. After this stamp was issued in 1913 an order went out by telegraph from the White House that set off an explosion of a dyke that first connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Getting the Exposition to San Francisco was a timely move. Panama was a long way away and they were not going to be able to have a world class exposition. The place was just too poor and isolated. It had indeed required a great deal of work on sanitation in Panama so to lesson the dangers of yellow fever and malaria to the thousands of Americans recruited to work on the project. Americans of the period had a special skill in this as they had figured out the connection of flys to the diseases after a program to reduce the diseases in then newly conquered Havana, Cuba. It still remains that about 5600 workers on the project died of disease and accidents. This does not include workers on an earlier failed French effort in the area.
San Francisco, on the other hand had been devastated by an earthquake in 1906. Nine years later was a perfect time for the city to announce that they were back and better than ever. Much Moorish style architecture was constructed for the fair. Interesting it was purposely designed to be short lived structures. The architect was of the opinion that every great city needs a few ruins. In the end most of it was demolished after the Exposition in 1915. The Palace of Fine Arts was allowed to remain. First as a ruin and later rebuilt as a permanent fixture of San Francisco to this day.
Well my drink is empty so I will pour another to toast those hearty souls who traveled to the jungles of Panama to build a great canal that still serves today. Quite an American achievement to remember on July 4th. Come again for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting. First published in 2018.