John Bethel Claybourn (1846–1923) Mary Ellen Claybourn (1848–1940)
John Geronald Claybourn (May 23, 1886 - June 26, 1967) was a civil engineer and Dredging Division Superintendent of the Isthmian Canal Commission. He was the original designer of Gamboa, Panama. During his career on the Panama Canal and after his retirement, Claybourn was involved as a consultant in river and harbor improvement projects in several countries, primarily in Latin America.
The Isthmian Canal Commission was an American administration commission set up to oversee the construction of the Panama Canal in the early years of American involvement. Established the February 26, 1904, it was given control of the Panama Canal Zone over which the United States exercised sovereignty. The commission reported directly to Secretary of War William Taft.
Gamboa is a small town in the Republic of Panama. It was one of a handful of permanent Canal Zone townships, built to house employees of the Panama Canal and their dependents. The name Gamboa is the name of a tree of the quince family.
The Panama Canal is an artificial 82 km (51 mi) waterway in Panama that connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The canal cuts across the Isthmus of Panama and is a conduit for maritime trade. Canal locks are at each end to lift ships up to Gatun Lake, an artificial lake created to reduce the amount of excavation work required for the canal, 26 m above sea level, and then lower the ships at the other end. The original locks are 34 m wide. A third, wider lane of locks was constructed between September 2007 and May 2016. The expanded canal began commercial operation on June 26, 2016. The new locks allow transit of larger, post-Panamax ships, capable of handling more cargo.
John Claybourn was born on May 23, 1886, in Albert Lea, Minnesota, to John B. and Ellen Claybourn. His uncle Ephraim Claybourn and cousin Vern Claybourn both held positions of prominence with the canal, making work there a family business of sorts. John graduated from high school in Albert Lea and then attended the College of Engineering at the University of Minnesota for three years.[1] Claybourn was married to Regina Flores, a native of Colombia, from 1913 until about 1927. In 1928 he then married Elsie Kathryn Grieser, a stenographer on the canal who had attained a measure of celebrity in her youth as a long-distance swimmer and canoeist.
Albert Lea is a city in Freeborn County, in the southeastern part of the State of Minnesota. It is also the county seat. Its population was 18,016 at the 2010 census.
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. The Minneapolis and St. Paul campuses are approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) apart, and the St. Paul campus is actually in neighboring Falcon Heights. It is the oldest and largest campus within the University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 50,943 students in 2018-19. The university is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota system, and is organized into 19 colleges and schools, with sister campuses in Crookston, Duluth, Morris, and Rochester.
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a sovereign state largely situated in the northwest of South America, with territories in Central America. Colombia shares a border to the northwest with Panama, to the east with Venezuela and Brazil and to the south with Ecuador and Peru. It shares its maritime limits with Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Colombia is a unitary, constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments, with the capital in Bogota.
Panama Canal
Claybourn began working with the dredging division of the Panama Canal in 1914. He was then promoted to junior engineer (1917-1918), assistant engineer (1919-1920), and finally superintendent of the division (1921-1948). In the 1930s he developed a plan to add a third set of locks, along with a 1940s plan to replace the canal with a parallel sea-level canal.
Gamboa
Gamboa and the Panama Canal as seen from the Gamboa Rainforest Resort's Canopy Tower
On July 30, 1923, two years after taking the role of superintendent of the Dredging Division, Claybourn wrote a memo to Jay Johnson Morrow, Governor of the Panama Canal Zone, recommending that the Dredging Division shops be moved from Paraiso to Gamboa for two reasons: "First, as a safeguard in case of obstruction of the Cut by slides, the logical location being between any possible dredging and the dumps at Gatun Lake; second, increased Canal traffic, as well as the size of ships, introduces a serious menace to our fleet when moored in the comparatively narrow confines of the Cut at Paraiso."[2] Three months later his concerns were validated when the USS O-5 (SS-66) entered Limon Bay, preparatory to transiting the Panama Canal, and was rammed by the United Fruit Company steamer Abangarez and sank in less than a minute. Three men died;[3] 16 others escaped.[4]
Jay Johnson Morrow was Chief Engineer of the United States First Army and as Deputy Chief Engineer of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I and Governor of the Panama Canal Zone from 1921 to 1924.
USS O-5 (SS-66) was one of 16 O-class submarines built for the United States Navy during World War I.
Limon Bay is a natural harbor located at the north end of the Panama Canal, west of the cities of Cristóbal and Colón. Ships waiting to enter the canal stay here, protected from storms by breakwaters.
In 1924, Claybourn created the original design and layout for a new town in Gamboa, Panama, including new facilities to house the canal's dredging division. After twelve years of lobbying Panama Canal governors to move the division from Paraíso, Panamá Province to Gamboa, Claybourn's suggestion was finally accepted by the Panama Canal Company in 1934. It moved its Dredging Division from the town of Paraíso to Gamboa in 1936.
Paraíso is a town in the Republic of Panama, located just north of the Panama Canal's Pedro Miguel Locks. It was a vibrant township of the old Canal Zone, though it was segregated for most of its history.
Claybourn served as President of the Gamboa Civic Council from 1937 to 1948 and President of the Gamboa Golf and Country Club in 1937, which is now the site of the Gamboa Rainforest Resort.[1] According to his successor, "He was known as John 'God' Claybourn by his employees. In designing the layout of the town he made it so that he could ravel[sic] from his residence to his headquarters without STOP signs. He played a key role in the design and materials selection for the residences."[2] In 1933, when a three-man board appointed by Canal Zone Governor J.L. Schley studied the feasibility of moving the Dredging Division to Gamboa, the population was 251, including just 10 Americans. The first Dredging Division families began moving into the newly built town of Gamboa in September 1936. Within a year, the town's population jumped to 1,419 and by 1942, the town reached its peak population of 3,853. To this day Gamboa remains the primary headquarters of the Dredging Division of the Panama Canal Authority.
The Panama Canal Zone was an unincorporated territory of the United States from 1903 to 1979, centered on the Panama Canal and surrounded by the Republic of Panama. The zone consisted of the canal and an area generally extending five miles (8.0 km) on each side of the centerline, excluding Panama City and Colón, which otherwise would have been partly within the limits of the Zone. Its border spanned three of Panama's provinces. When reservoirs were created to assure a steady supply of water for the locks, those lakes were included within the Zone.
The Panama Canal Authority is the agency of the government of Panama responsible for the operation and management of the Panama Canal. The ACP took over the administration of the canal from the Panama Canal Commission, the joint US–Panama agency that managed the canal, on December 31, 1999, when the canal was handed over from the United States to Panama as per the Torrijos–Carter Treaties.
Consulting
While working on the canal, Claybourn also worked as a consultant on a variety of river and harbor improvement projects in the surrounding countries, including work on the Dique de Cartagena, a ship canal in Colombia, and projects in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Florida, and Panama. In the 1920s John also worked on the mining of the Panama Gold Dredging Company. In Burma, from 1951 to 1953, he worked to rebuild the transportation network on the Irrawaddy River that was destroyed during World War II, and developed the Dalla Dockyards area near Rangoon. He died on June 26, 1967.[1]
Costa Rica, officially the Republic of Costa Rica, is a country in Central America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, Panama to the southeast, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, and Ecuador to the south of Cocos Island. It has a population of around 5 million in a land area of 51,060 square kilometers. An estimated 333,980 people live in the capital and largest city, San José with around 2 million people in the surrounding metropolitan area.
Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean to the west. Ecuador also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) west of the mainland. The capital city is Quito, which is also the largest city.
Florida is the southernmost contiguous state in the United States. The state is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Straits of Florida. Florida is the 22nd-most extensive, the 3rd-most populous, and the 8th-most densely populated of the U.S. states. Jacksonville is the most populous municipality in the state and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. The Miami metropolitan area is Florida's most populous urban area. Tallahassee is the state's capital.
Bibliography
Claybourn's papers are part of a collection at the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.[1] Throughout his life he also published several books relating to his work, including the following:
Claybourn, John G., Dredging on the Panama Canal (1931)
Claybourn, John G., The Dredging Division of the Panama Canal, Its Function, Organization and Equipment (1937)
Claybourn, John G., Evolution of the Panama Canal (1944)
Claybourn, John G., Streamlining the Panama Canal for Maximum Safety and Unlimited Capacity (1946)
Claybourn, John G., Suggested Methods and Equipment, Dredging and Mining for Converting the Present Lock Type Canal to Sea Level (1947)
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↑ Motor Machinist’s Mate First Class Clyde E. Hughes, Mess Attendant First Class Fred C. Smith, Fireman First Class Thomas T. Metzler
↑ Two missing men’s bodies were recovered from alongside the boat and interred at the Mount Hope Cemetery in the Canal Zone. Petty Officer Clyde E. Hughes’ body was never found.
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