Learn One of the World's Great Languages
- Aspinwall City
- Panama
- Distance from New York to San Francisco via Panama Route in 1850s and 1860s: 5,287 Nautical Miles
Aspinwall (now named Colon) began in 1850 as the starting point of a railroad on the Atlantic that was to carry people across the Isthmus of Panama. Before the railroad was built, gold seekers sailed in by ship from the eastern United States upto Chagres at Fort San Lorenzo, crossed the isthmus by boat upto Gorgona or Cruces, and the rest by mule upto Panama City, then continued by ship to California. The original name of the town — Aspinwall — was named for one of the builders of the railroad.
Covering the entire island was a dense growth of the water-loving mangrove
and poisonous manzanillo trees, growing out of the swamp of un-fathomable
ooze which was the habitat of alligators and other huge reptiles. The air
was filled with poisonous insects and heavy with the unhealthy vapors rising
from the marshes. Columbus sailed away to a point fifty miles west of Colon
and made a settlement which he named Belen. Here he left his brother Diego
with one hundred men. The settlers remained there for some time and the
sad story of the privations, hardships, and the final destruction of the
entire group by the Indians. Portobelo San Lorenzo The Panama Railroad Nombre
de Dios, Porto Bello, San Lorenzo Balboa and the other navigators sailed
by its site without heed, making for Porto Bello or Nombre de Dios, the
better harbors.
San Lorenzo, whose ruins stand at the mouth of the Chagres River, looked
down upon busy fleets, and fell before the assaults of Sir Henry Morgan
and his buccaneers while the coral island that now upholds Colon was tenanted
only by pelicans, alligators and serpents.
The town had been built by the railroad on Manzanillo Island, a coral flat,
no more than a mile by three-quarters of a mile in area, at the entrance
to Limon Bay. When the engineers first came to locate there the beginnings
of the Panama railroad, they were compelled to make their quarters in an
old sailing ship. In his "History of the Panama Railroad," published in
1862, F. N. Otis describes the site as being "cut off from the mainland
by a narrow frith contained an area of a little more than one square mile.
It was a virgin swamp, covered with a dense growth of the tortuous, water-loving
mangrove, and interlaced with huge vines and thorny shrubs defying entrance
even to the wild beasts common to the country. In the black slimy mud of
its surface alligators and other reptiles abounded, while the air was laden
with pestilential vapors and swarming with sandflies and mosquitoes. Residence
on the island was impossible.
The in 1851 a storm prevented two New York ships from landing their passengers
at the mouth of the Chagres River. The delayed travelers were instead landed
at Colon where rails had been laid as far as Gatun. This route proving the
more expeditious the news quickly reached New York and the ships began making
Colon their port.
Residents suffered from disease, violence and torrential tropical rain --
more than 11 feet annually -- and wild fires during the dry season, when
the tinderbox town was gutted by flames. Corpses of murdered men were found
each morning lying in the gutters or floating face down in the bay. In their
attempts to avoid fever and dysentery, railroad officials and businessmen
of Manzanillo sometimes went on regimens of champagne doused heavily with
quinine. This was supposed to be an effective cure for tropical affliction,
but when pursued too long the practice brought delirium tremens and other
symptoms as deadly as the fever itself.
Local business prospered, especially the prostitutes. Their pimps stood
outside in ankle-deep mud to hawk the claims of their lovelies and to propel
drunks bodily through the swinging doors of the stalls. Over the years liquor
bottles tossed into the street created a solid layer of glass beneath the
mud. In the 1890's pavement-laying contractors found it unnecessary to put
down a gravel foundation because the thousands of bottles buried there served
the purpose. Prostitutes came from around the world, especially from low-earning
areas such as England. The fair-skinned girls were very popular but unfortunately
short-lived, being especially susceptible to fever. The girls and their
pimps - "Buttock and Twang" as they were called in the cockney jargon -
slept most of the day and commenced their business as soon as darkness fell.
The Buttock made the approach and fulfilled her part of the contract leaning
back spread-eagled against a building wall. While her client performed,
she picked his pocket. The Twang stood by with drawn dirk, ready to give
assistance. If the client seemed well-heeled, the Butt signaled and the
Twang leaped forward and struck with his dirk. Then he and the girl dragged
the dead man away to rifle his pockets and money belt at their leisure.
On February 29, 1852, the railroad company laid the cornerstone of a new
passenger station and office building, the first brick structure the island.
The ceremony brought railroad officials, members of consular staffs, local
businessmen, and others. Among the dignitories were George Law, John L.
Stephens - Vice-President of the Panama Railroad, Minor C. Story -a large
railroad construction contractor - and a local resident whose name is listed
in the record only as R. Webb of Manzanillo Island. During the celebration
the town was given a formal name. William Henry Aspinwall
Daily Alta California, July 10, 1852
CITY OF ASPINWALL.--In one of the Eastern journals we find the following
account of the ceremonies of dedicating and naming the new city of Aspinwall.
So intimately connected is the Isthmus of Panama with California, both commercially
and through the coastant travel beteween the two places, that our readers
cannot but feel interested in all the improvements going on there.
Arguments ensued about the naming of the town as local officials insisted
that it was Colon. Railroad officials refused to change it causing confusion
over the actual name until 1890 when the government at Bogota ordered its
post office department to return all mail to sender addressed with the name
"Aspinwall" on the envelope. Once the search for gold waned, Colon settled
down to a period of lethargy and there was no sign of a renewal until late
in the 70's the French engineers arrived to begin the surveys for the Canal.