_{Headquarters of the French company In Panama City (originally a hotel in Cathedral Plaza); sold to the United States in 1904 and used as the headquarters of the Isthmian Canal Commission until 1907 when transferred to Panama. Now the site of the Inter-Oceanic Museum of the Canal (Source: Inter-Oceanic Museum of the Canal, used with permission.)}

That construction effort ended in 1898 after 18 years of work, $260 million in cost and thousands of deaths from yellow fever, malaria, and other tropical diseases. Heading that effort was Ferdinand de Lesseps who had been triumphant in constructing the Suez Canal. In fact, his success at Suez was his downfall in Panama because his engineers greatly underestimated the job required in Panama, a much more difficult project than construction of the Suez Canal from every point of view. Though hampered by inadequate equipment, financial troubles, and diseases, the French excavated 78 million cubic yards from Culebra Cut (later renamed Gaillard Cut), of which almost 30 million was useful to the later U.S. canal builders. At the height of the French effort, some 19,000 men had worked on the project.

The French company's effort failed for several reasons: De Lesseps' insistence on building a sea-level canal instead of a locks canal which would have required much less excavation; inability to solve certain practical engineering problems; lack of knowledge of the cause of yellow fever and malaria; inadequate attention to housing and feeding a large work force which could not be accommodated by the small Panamanian economy then in existence; and a series of financial scandals.

If poor planning, disease, and mismanagement led to a bitter disappointment for the French, it can be said for them that they were the first to dare such a project that had held the minds of men in awe for more than three centuries. And they accomplished much basic work that gave the later American effort its first big push.