What Is the Panama Canal - What Was...? Author:Janet Pascal Before 1914, traveling from the East Coast to the West Coast meant going by land across the entire United States. To go by sea involved a long journey around South America and north along the Pacific Coast. But then, in a dangerous and amazing feat of engineering, a 48-mile-long channel was dug through Panama, creating the world?s most famous sh... more »ortcut: the Panama Canal!« less