Students will now be able to learn about and experience the Panama Canal while walking between classes.
The Panama Canal Trail opened Feb. 27 in a series of exhibits celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal’s completion.
Frank Townsend, a UF professor emeritus of civil and coastal engineering, designed the trail with help from the UF Panama Canal Museum Collection, on the third floor of Smathers Library. Townsend, born near the canal, said it was only logical to take on the project.
“The Panama Canal is being celebrated through art and history, so I wanted to do something for the engineering side,” he said.
The trail, a one one-hundredth scale of the actual canal, is about a half mile and spans from the Plaza of the Americas to outside the Reitz Union. It is marked by blue stickers on the ground and signs that feature pictures and information provided by UF’s special collections on Panama.
Lourdes Santamaría-Wheeler, the exhibits coordinator at Smathers Library, said she hopes the trail will highlight for the special resources UF offers on the topic.
“The government has the official records, but we have more personal records, like people’s diaries and photographs,” she said.
Stephanie McComber, a UF international studies junior, volunteers with the Panama Canal Museum Collection, digitizing the resources in the library to make them available for online research.
McComber, 20, has lived in Panama, and said the trail reflects the magnitude of the actual canal, as well as the country’s small size.
“The canal gets overlooked sometimes, I think,” she said, “but it’s important because it connects not only waterways but also the people around them.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 3/8/2015 under the headline “Smathers recreates Panama Canal for 100th anniversary]
