Panama Canal Zone

For 75 years, a ten-mile-wide ribbon across the Isthmus of Panama was run by the United States. The Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty of 1903, signed two weeks after Panama broke away from Colombia with American backing, gave the U.S. control of a zone reaching about five miles on each side of the planned canal. Covering 553 square miles, the Canal Zone had its own governor, police, courts, schools and post office, and its American residents, known as Zonians, lived in tidy company towns.

The canal opened in August 1914, cutting the sea voyage between New York and San Francisco by about 8,000 miles. Resentment of the foreign enclave ran deep in Panama, and deadly riots over flying the Panamanian flag in the Zone in January 1964 pushed both countries toward a new deal. The Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977 abolished the Canal Zone on October 1, 1979, and the canal itself passed fully to Panama at noon on December 31, 1999.

• Colorado River Aqueduct
  The 242-mile lifeline that carries the Colorado to Los Angeles related
• Hoover Dam
  The concrete colossus on the Colorado related
• Puerto Rico
  The most populous U.S. territory, a Caribbean commonwealth related
• The Philippines (U.S. Territory)
  An American possession for nearly half a century, 1898–1946 related