The “Richest River in the World”: The Maritime Cultural Landscape of the Mouth of the Río Chagres, Republica de Panamá

Abstract

The Río Chagres (Chagres River) emerges from the isthmian jungle to drain into the Caribbean side of the Isthmus of Panamá, in the center of the country and approximately seven nautical miles (9 km) from Colon and the entrance to the Panamá Canal (Fig. 13.1). Now a nearly forgotten byway, overshadowed by the busy Canal, the Chagres was a significant waterway for both the prehistoric and the historic period inhabitants of the isthmus. Recently (2008) surveyed as part of a joint project of the Waitt Institute for Discovery and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA/WID), the mouth of the Río Chagres is the location of a collective group of sites and remains that form a significant maritime cultural landscape that includes the site of the seventeenth century village of Chagres and the remains of various fortifications from the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, including the Castillo de San Lorenzo, a World Heritage Site. This maritime cultural landscape also includes the natural resources of the area, such as the cliff on which the Castillo rests, the sandbars and beaches at the river’s entrance, Lajas Reef, and the river channel itself – all of which influenced and were impacted by the human activities that have occurred here over the last 500 years. As far as we know, this assessment is the first time the concept of a maritime cultural landscape has been applied in Central America.