The canal was completed in August of 1914, under budget by twenty-three million dollars. The first ship to cross the isthmus was the concrete ship Cristobal, the official and publicized ship to make the voyage was the Ancon. Unfortunately, the opening came just as World War I started in Europe, and so the fact that the greatest human endeavor had been completed was last on most everyone's mind. Initial traffic on the canal was around two-thousand …showed first 75 words of 375 total…

…showed last 75 words of 375 total…bend the isthmus between North and South America until it broke and a new path between the seas was created. Killer diseases, high costs, seemingly impossible excavations, all faced the engineers at the Canal Zone, but one by one they were overcome until the Panama Canal alone stood out from among the rubble and invited people of the world to come and cruise her waters - a new pathway for the ever-expanding, ever-changing human race.