The Bucyrus Co. of South Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
manufactured most of the 102 steam shovels used to dig the canal. The largest
weighed 95 tons (86 metric tons) with dippers capable of extracting up
to five cubic yards (four cubic meters) in each cycle. Ten hours a day,
six days a week, they loaded from 4,000 to 6,000 cubic yards (3,000 to
4,600 cubic meters) of stiff clay and blasted rock.
Even with this capacity, it took more than nine years of nearly non-stop digging to create the nine-mile-long (14.5-kilometer) Culebra Cut, which connected Gatun Lake and the Pedro Miguel Locks across Panama's continental divide. This dipper from a 70-ton steam shovel has a scooping volume of three cubic yards (2.3 cubic meters).
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