Nicaragua Canal - After The Panama Canal

After The Panama Canal

Since the Panama Canal opened in 1914, the Nicaragua route has been reconsidered. Its construction would shorten the water distance between New York and San Francisco by nearly 800 kilometers (500 mi). Under the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty of 1916, the United States paid Nicaragua US$3 million for an option in perpetuity and free of taxation, including 99-year leases of the Corn Islands and a site for a naval base on the Gulf of Fonseca.

In 1929, the US Interocean Canal Board approved out a two-year detailed study for a ship canal route, known as the Sultan Report after its author, the US army engineer Col. Daniel Sultan. From 1930 to 1931 the US Army Corp of Engineers survey team of 300 men, surveyed the route of any future canal, called the Forty-Niners route because it followed closely the route that miners took in the 1840s California Gold Rush. But Costa Rica protested that Costa Rican rights to the San Juan River had been infringed, and El Salvador maintained that the proposed naval base would affect both it and Honduras. Both protests were upheld by the Central American Court of Justice in rulings that were not recognized by either Nicaragua or the U.S. Both nations repealed the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty on 14 July 1970.

Between 1939 and 1940, with war in Europe underway, a new study was made for the construction of a barge canal. Three variants were considered with minimum channel depths of six-feet, ten-feet and twelve feet.