Why couldn’t they just dig a trench big enough to connect the Pacific and Atlantic instead of the lock system of the Panama Canal?

Question

Saw a post about the canal, and this question popped up.

In: 9

Answer 1

They could have.

It just would have meant two things:

Moving a FUCKTON more dirt. Like seriously. You would have to move billions of pounds of dirt and rock. It would be an insane amount of earth to move.

and building a longer canal. because they current panama canal actually takes a shortcut through an existing really big lake. So the actual distance they had to dig was much less. But if you didn’t use locks, then the whole lake would drain away, meaning you would have to build the canal somewhere else and dig through EVEN MORE dirt and rock.

The current panama canal had to move 240 million cubic yards of earth to be built, or about 180 empire state buildings. Doing it your way would have to move probably BILLIONS of cubic yards.

TL:DR they did it the way they did it because it was cheaper to use Gatun Lake instead of digging even more earth.