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monument to the 3 men who founded the Panama Railway, William Aspinwall, John Stephens and Henry

mikdbow (Premium member) > albums > Panama, Coast to Coast to Coast

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The US Congress saw the need for a mail route from the East Coast to California and Oregon on the West Coast. Hoping to seed up the construction of a route, authorized the establishment of two mail steamship lines. One would connect New York and New Orleans to Panama, on the east coast. The other would connect Panama via the isthmus, to California and Oregon, on the west coast. William H. Aspinwall secured the rights for the line on the Pacific, which included the isthmus portion. George Law was awarded the contract for the Atlantic route. Aspinwall and his associates, John L. Stephens and Henry Chauncey, secured a contract with Nueva Granada (later to be renamed, Colombia), for the construction of "Iron Road, across the Isthmus of Panama". They requested concession from Nueva Granada, as early as 1848. They also secured the help of the US Topographical Corps, and the service of G. W. Hughes, to do a survey and mapping of the best route, and feasibility. They reported that a railroad was practical and corroborated Stephen's and Aspinwall's opinions. Aspinwall immediately returned to New York, and the three partners incorporated the Panama Railroad Company, in 1850, with a fixed capital of $5,000,000 and all the stock (at $100 a share) was quickly sold.. They were granted exclusive rights to build the railroad by the government of Nueva Granada. On April 15, 1850, a concession was signed by Secretary of State of Nueva Granada, Don Victoriano de Diego Paredes and John L. Stephens. This railroad was to connect the old, colonial city of Panama, on the Pacific coast, with some point on the Caribbean coast. This contract granted them six years to build the railroad, and then gave them forty-nine years to run it after it was completed. There was a inclusion in the contract that if after 20 years, Nueva Granada wanted, they could buy the railroad for $5,000,000, the amount was the same that was projected for the cost of the railroad, and the same as the initial stock offering.

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