About Gamboa Panama

The little town of Gamboa in Panama is a forty-minute drive away from Panama City, but unlike the latter, Gamboa feels just so remote due to the fact that it is closer to nature. This town is constructed by the Panama Canal Company in the early 1930s to provide shelter for the workers of the Panama Canal Dredging Division.

The Past

In the history Gamboa was built nearly in the former village of Sta. Cruz, were three miles the Chagres River was the town of Las Cruces. In 1855 after the completion of the Panama Railroad which ran near the Panama area, yet made no stops and no PR maps list any towns in its present location.

During canal construction Gamboa’s present day was built in 1911. The town was populated by “silver roll” workers and their dependents. Almost 700 initial settlers were previously lived in the construction areas between Gorgona and former towns of Tabernilla. Together with the towns first citizen, no Americans were counted.

Along 1914, Gamboa’s population decreased to 173 which consist of a police station, a four-family house, a two-family house and some old railroad box cars used by the house silver roll employees. 

After long years of studies and debates, Panama Canal Company moved its Dredging Division from the town of Paraiso to Gamboa in 1936. In 1933, due to the moving of Dredging Division to Gamboa, the population was 251, including just 10 Americans.

The Present

In present time Gamboa is still inhabited, but with a shadow of its old self. It remains the original headquarters of the Dredging Division of the Panama Canal Authority (formerly PCC).

The Dredging Division’s harbour is now used by light ferries to reach the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) facilities at Barro Colorado Island.

Caymans, iguanas, crocodiles and several hundred bird species are Gamboa’s residents. Gamboa is bordering to relevant tracts of undisturbed rainforest. The Pipeline Road is considered one of the best birding hikes in Panama.it is also one of the premiere bird watching sites in all of Central America.      

Image credit: www.elitemeetings.com