Title: History of the Panama Canal
Content:  canal ends. Adding the work by the French, the total excavation was about 204900000 m3 (over 25 times the volume excavated in the Channel Tunnel project). Of the three presidents whose terms spanned the construction period, Theodore Roosevelt is most associated with the canal and Woodrow Wilson presided over its opening. However, William Howard Taft may have given the canal its greatest impetus for the longest time. Taft visited Panama five times as Roosevelt's secretary of war and twice as president. He hired John Stevens and later recommended Goethals as Stevens' replacement. Taft became president in 1909, when the canal was half finished, and was in office for most of the remainder of the work. However, Goethals 
Title: History of Panama
Content:  The Panama Canal was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers between 1904 and 1914; the existing 83-kilometer (50-mi.) lock canal is considered one of the world's great engineering triumphs. On January 5, 1909 the government of Rafael Reyes in Colombia signed and presented to its Congress a treaty that would officially recognize the loss of its former province, but the treaty was not ratified, due to popular and legislative opposition. Negotiations continued intermittently until a new treaty was signed on December 21, 1921 which formally accepted the independence of Panama. Roosevelt's policy to ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’, and the Canal Company's apartheid early on, have been much criticized. Yet, beyond the financial injection to the country's economy and workforce, the changes brought about by the canal venture were largely 
Title: History of Panama (1821–1903)
Content:  Throughout the nineteenth century, governments and private investors in the United States, Britain, and France intermittently displayed interest in building a canal across the Western Hemisphere. Several sites were considered, but from the start the ones in Nicaragua and Panama received the most serious attention. President Andrew Jackson sent Charles A. Biddle as his emissary in the 1830s to investigate both routes, but the project was aborted when Biddle abandoned his government mission and negotiated instead with Colombian capitalists for a private concession. Nevertheless, Colombia continued to express interest in negotiating with the United States on building a canal. A treaty was signed in 1846 between the two countries. The treaty removed the existing 
Title: William Kennish
Content:  century to build a canal across it. No further United States action was taken on a canal until after Panama revolted against Colombia and became independent in 1903. The Panamanians "negotiated a treaty with the United States that created a Canal Zone 10 miles (16 km) wide under U.S. sovereignty in exchange for an agreement by the United States to build the canal and to provide a regular annual payment to Panama. Although the U.S. government later agreed to pay $25 million to Colombia, the episode embittered Colombian-U.S. relations for many years." The canal was constructed from 1904 to 1914.
Title: History of the Panama Canal
Content:   The idea of the Panama Canal dates back to 1513, when Vasco Núñez de Balboa first crossed the isthmus. The narrow land bridge between North and South America houses the Panama Canal, a water passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The earliest European colonists recognized this potential, and several proposals for a canal were made. By the late nineteenth century, technological advances and commercial pressure allowed construction to begin in earnest. Noted canal engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps led an initial attempt by France to build a sea-level canal. Beset by cost overruns due to the severe underestimation of the difficulties in excavating the rugged Panama land, heavy personnel losses in Panama due 
Title: History of the Panama Canal
Content:  wrote: "The real builder of the Panama Canal was Theodore Roosevelt". The following words by Roosevelt are displayed in the rotunda of the canal's administration building in Balboa: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high 
Title: Panama Canal
Content:  worthy the attempt: it being but few miles over, and would open a shorter cut unto the East Indies and China". In 1788, American Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, suggested that the Spanish should build the canal, since they controlled the colonies where it would be built. He said that this would be a less treacherous route for ships than going around the southern tip of South America, and that tropical ocean currents would naturally widen the canal after construction. During an expedition from 1788 to 1793, Alessandro Malaspina outlined plans for construction of a canal. Given the strategic location of Panama, 
Title: History of the Panama Canal
Content: Collin, Richard H. Theodore Roosevelt's Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, & the Latin American Context (Louisiana State U. Press, 1990), 520pp ; Greene, Julie. (2009). The Canal Builders: Making America's Empire at the Panama Canal. New York: The Penguin Press. ISBN: 978-1-59420-201-8 ; Lafeber, Walter. The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective (3rd ed. 1990), the standard scholarly account of diplomacy ; McCullough, David. (1977). The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 0-671-22563-4 ; Parker, Matthew. (2008).Panama Fever: The Epic Story of One of the Greatest Human Achievements of All Time&mdash;The Building of the Panama Canal. Doubleday. ISBN: 978-0385515344 ; Smith, Gaddis. Morality Reason, and Power: American Diplomacy in the Carter Years (1986) pp 110–15. ; Strong, Robert A. "Jimmy Carter and the Panama Canal Treaties." Presidential Studies Quarterly (1991) 21.2: 269-286 online ; Swilling, Mary C. "The Business of the Canal: The Economics and Politics of the Carter Administration’s Panama Canal Zone Initiative, 1978." Essays in Economic & Business History (2012) 22:275-89. online ; Williams, Mary Wilhelmine. Anglo-American Isthmian Diplomacy, 1815–1915 (1916) online 
Title: José Manuel Marroquín
Content:  and action was the desire of Roosevelt’s administration to build, operate and control an interoceanic canal. The events leading to the separation of Panamá from Colombia arise from the desires of business and strategic interests that wished to construct an interoceanic canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. The concept of such a canal through Panamá dates to the early 16th century. The first attempt to construct the Panama Canal began in 1880 under Colombian control and French leadership. But this effort had failed and another project was being considered through Nicaragua. President Marroquín vehemently opposed such idea and pushed for plan to build the 
Title: Panama Canal
Content:  on the canal in 1881, but stopped because of lack of investors' confidence due to engineering problems and a high worker mortality rate. The United States took over the project on May 4, 1904 and opened the canal on August 15, 1914. The US continued to control the canal and surrounding Panama Canal Zone until the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties provided for handover to Panama. After a period of joint American–Panamanian control, the canal was taken over by the Panamanian government in 1999. It is now managed and operated by the government-owned Panama Canal Authority. Canal locks at each end lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m (85 ft) above sea level, and then 

Question: who was president when the panama canal was built?
Answer: Theodore Roosevelt.
President Theodore Roosevelt.