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Panama's fortified islands

by Eric Jackson

On May 4 the Panama Historical Society gathered earlier than usual, and at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's Punta Culebra Marine Exhibition Center rather than the usual Niko's in Balboa, to join its regular meeting with the new Spanish-language lecture series that STRI is putting on. The speaker was the society's president, John Carlson, who spoke of the history of the islands that have been linked by the Amador Causeway.

The date happened to be the 101st anniversary of the Americans taking possession of the islands from the French canal company in 1904 --- a simple handover of sets of keys without much ceremony. Carlson noted that his first experience at Amador was when he won a high school essay contest and became "General for a day" and got the tour of Amador, then used both by the US Army and US Navy.

Although he said that no archaelogical evidence of the islands' pre-Columbian settlement is known, Carlson noted that the islands would have been desirable places to live and probably were inhabited before the Spaniards came.

In addition to the islands' little-known Pre-Columbian epoch, Carlson divides their historiography into colonial, Colombian and republican periods.

"The Spaniards, being great sailors, loved these islands," Carlson said. But there were problems thoughout most of the colonial era with pirate attacks. (Of course, from another perspective a lot of this wasn't a matter of ordinary crime, but rather privateering under charter of the British crown.) The problem persisted until 1819, when a Latin American pirate sailed up from the south and attacked Panama, with little success.

The best known of the attacks, the one by Henry Morgan, prompted Spanish authorities to move their city from an ancient indigenous site now known as Panama Viejo to a point several miles west which is now the Casco Viejo. After that move the islands became the main port for Panama City, but between Morgan's attack and the completion of the move to the Casco Viejo another group of Brits attacked, and a battle was fought at Perico Island, where they had careened their ships.

In Colombian period the pirate raids ceased and international commerce across the isthmus grew, and the islands' importance to trade and transportation grew along with it. The Pacific Mail Steamship Line in particular bought Naos and set up workshops and employee housing there.

In the late 1840s construction began on the Panama Railroad, and it was the investors' good luck that while work was underway a great migration to California began. "The railroad wasn't begun for the Gold Rush," Carlson pointed out, "but the Gold Rush guaranteed its success. The railroad set up its Pacific terminus, bought its own lighters to get around the mail company's domination of the transportation across the shallow mud flats that separated their dock on Panama Bay from the ships out in the deeper water, and even agreed in 1867 to build a causeway to the islands. The railroad, however, was unable to turn that concession into a reality at the time.

Before the railroad was finished, it was being used, with travelers going as far by rail as they could and walking or riding horses or mules the rest of the way. One group that passed across the isthmus that way in 1852  was a US Army regiments commanded by a Colonel Bonneville, which included a Captain U. S. Grant from whom history would hear much more. There was a cholera epidemic among the men, some 150 of whom died and were buried on Flamenco Island. Later, it is said that the bodies were moved to Corozal, though Carlson said that today the graves are not readily found at that latter site.

The French came for their canal construction effort, which contemplated a narrow ship channel to the east of the islands rather than the wide one that now passes to their west. During their time the French established Camp DeLuxe on Flamenco Island, where it was a major partying place until the bubble burst a few years later. But the French camp was kept going with a skeleton crew until the Americans came for their canal effort. The Americans took over both the French camp, turning it into a US military installation, and the steampship company's facilities on Naos, which were demolished.

The causeway began with dirt and rocks excavated from Culebra Cut, and originally extended just to Naos Island. The present Balboa was largely a mangrove swamp, and fill from the same source turned it into a townsite. The landfilling that made both the causeway and most of Balboa was made possible by two major inventions by members of the canal work force, Colonel Beard's track shifter and Ledgerwood's unloader, which make the transfer and dumping of material from miles away by rail practical to do.

Early on, a study for the Americans suggested that the islands and their connecting causeway could be a valuable recreational asset. Palm trees were planted on the causeway, but the place became a military base and didn't assume its present recreational role until decades later. Mainly it was used for military and canal purposes.

Culebra Island, turned into Culebra Point by the causeway, became the quarantine station to keep contagious diseases from coming to the isthmus by sea. A series of big guns were installed, including a 26-inch cannon on Perico Island. When the Americans moved in they called the new military installation Fort Grant, which was officially renamed Fort Amador in 1910 but still called Fort Grant for many years afterward. The islands and causeway were eventually linked by a series of bunkers, tunnels and gun emplacements that Carlson described as "an interconnected city among the four islands."

But of course those fortifications were made for the military technology of World War I, which became obsolete with the rise of military aviation. For World War II anti-aircraft guns, klieg lights and facilities to lay mines came to the islands, along with artillery that could hit Punta Chame in the event of a hostile landing.

After World War II the enhanced importance of aerial warfare brought Hawk missiles to Flamenco, and for aviation purposes the US Federal Aviation Administration set up radar on Perico. But with the advent of intercontinental ballistic missiles the Hawks themselves became obsolete.

With the entry into effect of the Panama Canal Treaties in 1979, Amador began to be shared between the US military and the now defunct Panama Defense Forces. Manuel Antonio Noriega had a retreat on Culebra, which is now used by the Smithsonian. A strange surprise encounter between STRI's Dr. Neal Smith, who was studying a vulture, and a PDF guard who didn't know what to think of a strange civilian who handled the disgusting large scavengers, may have convinced people on either side that the others were weird if harmless and best avoided.

Now Amador is a prime bit of urban real estate, on which there has been a lot of development and many more projects have been touted and then evaporated as it turned out that the financing ARI had been told existed never really did.

Carlson concluded his talk with a recognition that a lot of the historical sites on Amador have been destroyed by development and a plea to save other historical sites that still exist. He pointed out that Kobbe Beach is a largely uninvestigated pre-Columbian graveyard now threatened with a residential development, and that one of the best preserved parts of the colonial era Las Cruces Trail has also been turned over to a developer.