CIPA 2003 XIX th International Symposium, 30 September - 04 October, 2003, Antalya, Turkey 
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Republic of Panama as well, the second step of the 
project was ready to start. This was the signing of the 
cooperative agreement between organizations and 
pertinent entities that were interested in documenting 
the engineering, architectural and cultural aspects of 
the Canal. 
Knowing we had no hard copy of engineering 
drawings in the United States, the PANAMA CANAL 
DOCUMENTATION PROJECT had to approach the 
mission of recording a historic structure that was 
distant, and in another country, through obtaining 
construction drawings, as it would have involved 
many difficulties to have conducted the documentation 
through field measurements. The VIRTUAL 
APPROACH was decided. 
Next, another decision came into place: the period to 
document. The dates selected were 1904 to 1914 that 
included the planning , the sanitary and the 
construction periods of the Isthmian Canal 
Commissions. We needed to locate and obtain the 
digital images of these drawings, within the vast 
amount of information (3,000.sq ft of drawings +/- 
200.000 digital entries). 
A selection of 30,000 scanned drawings, within a total 
of 200,000 was copied to 37 CDs. But when 
manipulating the scanned information at the 
Washington office it was hard to access as it was 
arranged numerically and there was no subject 
reference for its retrieval. An exhaustive research at 
the ACP led us to finding the Isthmian Canal 
Commission’s LOG BOOK which became the key to 
the following processes of the Documentation Project. 
In order to understand what I just said, you must 
understand that the actual work of the Panama Canal 
began before it had been finally decided whether the 
sea-level, or lock, type of canal would be adopted. 
Much of the organization had been set in place before 
Congress ordered that a lock canal be built. In the later 
part of 1906, a designing force was organized, under 
the Principal Assistant Engineer in the Washington 
Office of the Isthmian Canal Commission. This force 
presented studies for the lock masonry, the gates and 
the emergency dams. A group went to the Isthmus of 
Panama after the reorganization of the work in the 
spring of 1907, and continued there developing the 
studies for the masonry. However, the studies for the 
lock gates and emergency dams were continued in 
Washington. In July 1908, the designing of the locks, 
dams and regulating works was consolidated and the 
part of the force then in Washington was brought to 
the Isthmus, and remained there until disbanded upon 
completion of its work. 
Finally, in 1908 the office force of the Assistant Chief 
Engineer, engaged upon the designs was organized in 
1908 into six subdivisions as follows: 
MASONRY and LOCKS, including VALVES 
LOCK GATES 
OPERATING MACHINERY and ELECTRIC 
INSTALLATIONS 
EMERGENCY DAMS 
SPILLWAYS 
AIDS TO NAVIGATION 
Cooperation among these subdivisions was essential 
as the designs and plans prepared by each were more 
or less affected by those of others; the plans as a whole 
had to be in agreement, to avoid errors in construction. 
Thus, the tracings originating in one subdivision were 
submitted for review to every other subdivision whose 
plans might be affected, and there, such affected 
portions were checked and the tracings signed by 
those in charge. Subsequent alterations or additions to 
plans had to be conspicuously reviewed and the 
revised tracing dated and initialed by all concerned. A 
record was kept of all blueprints sent to the 
construction divisions, together with the 
acknowledgment of their receipt, and this is the LOG 
BOOK that we found. 
With the scanned digital drawings, the Log Book and 
a reference library of 199 books acquired under a 
long-term lease from the Panama Canal Commission’s 
Washington office, six main subjects were selected to 
approach the fifty-mile / 80 Kilometers waterway 
connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. As 
originally designed it was composed of three pair of 
locks-Miraflores, Pedro Miguel and Gatun-one dam, 
Gatun, and two lakes-Gatun and Miraflores, two port 
facilities and a Railroad mainly. Later, in the mid-20th 
century, the Bridge of the Americas that spans the 
Canal, Madden Dam, and other improvements were 
added. These aspects of the Canal are to be recorded 
by the Historic American Engineering Record ~ 
HAER. 
Singular buildings within the Canal Zone, like the 
Administration Building at Balboa, the house of the 
Administrator of the Canal, the Hospitals at Colon and 
Panama City, the lock control houses, the lighthouses, 
the railroad terminals, etc. will be documented through 
the Historic American Buildings Survey ~ HABS, 
being all fine examples of 20 th -century tropical 
architecture. 
The five U.S. community sites, the six forts, two air 
force bases and the facilities of a single naval station 
that were turned over to the Panamanian government 
on December 31,1999, with the property transfer and 
as part of the privatization process, typical changes in 
the urban and architectural character of the Canal are 
occurring, necessitating the need for documentation of 
these early twentieth century landscapes as part of the 
Historic American Landscapes Survey ~ HALS. 
DELIVERABLES OF THE PROJECT 
Two main deliverables -the database and the 
drawings-, as also a huge electronic image bank and