Where did the thousands of people who built the Panama Canal live while they worked on the Panama Canal?
They lived in wooden buildings. Married men with families lived in homes and single men lived in dormitory type buildings. These small towns were spread out along the route of the canal so that the men would not have far to go to work. Many of the buildings were moved into more permanent town sites such as Balboa, Ancon, Paraiso (Colored), Gamboa and Cristobal once the canal was completed. These towns were segregated by race or country of origin. Most of the skilled labor was White and from the US, most of the unskilled labor was Black (Colored) and came from the Islands of the Carribean.
