Download or read book What Is the Panama Canal? written by Janet B. Pascal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-07-17 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 shortcut: the Panama Canal!