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“Trains, Boats and Trails: Tracking Levi Strauss in Panama — Introduction”
“Crossing the Isthmus,” from Mountains and Molehills by Frank Marryat.
Courtesy Robert Chandler.
Part of my job as Levi Strauss & Co. Historian is researching the company’s lost or hidden history. Lately, I’ve been doing some pretty serious work on the life of Levi Strauss, as I’m planning to write his biography soon.
Over the last few months I’ve been reading a lot of diaries, books and newspaper articles lately about the way men and women traveled from New York to California during the 1850s. More specifically, I’ve been researching the crossing via the isthmus of Panama, because that was the route Levi Strauss took when he sailed for San Francisco in February of 1853 to start his business.
There were two other ways to get to California from the East at this time: in a clipper ship around the tip of South America, or overland in a wagon train. These two methods could take 3-6 months, and although all of these methods were dangerous in their own way (drowning, shipwrecks, accidents, disease, wild animals), the Panama transit was the shortest, only 4-6 weeks. My research tells me that Levi took this route, but I felt I needed to go further to understand what this experience was like for him. Therefore, I’m taking a short vacation and heading to the isthmus myself.
Here’s how Levi made the trip. He left New York via a United States Mail steamship around February 5, 1853. This boat headed toward Panama via Jamaica and the Caribbean’s Windward Passage, landing on the 50-mile-wide isthmus of Panama after a trip of about 10 days. Levi then boarded the Panama Railway, which took him a few miles inland.
He got off the train and then took a canoe up the Chagres River to the village of Gorgona, where he rented a mule for the final leg of the journey: approximately 20 miles on a rough and narrow road.
The Gorgona trail ended in Panama City, on the Pacific. Crossing the entire isthmus probably took 2 days, and he likely waited a few days in Panama City for the next steamer for San Francisco. He arrived in the city sometime in early March of 1853.
In March of 2009, I decided to take a short vacation and go to Panama to recreate each aspect of Levi’s journey. My guide was the legendary Hernán Araúz, from Ancon Expeditions of Panama, and together we crossed the isthmus on the Panama Railroad, took a dugout canoe ride on the Chagres River, and walked one of the old mule trails. We also visited the National Library of Panama to view original copies of the Panama Herald, a newspaper first published in the 1850s for Gold Rush travelers.
My three-part series about the Levi Strauss Re-Creation Vacation - called “Trains, Boats and Trails: Tracking Levi Strauss in Panama” - ran on the blog Denim News and I’ve also posted it here on my website.
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