Photo of the Week

Continuing with the Don Scheltmeyer's collection of 35mm slides. This week we are at the mouth of the Chagres River near Fort San Lorenzo. The photo above is really interesting as the fisherman are fishing off a sand bar on the Yankee Chagres side of the river. Yankee Chagres was a small settlement across the river from the fort's original town of Chagres. Yankee Town has been referred to as a wild west boomtown of hotels, restaurants, bars and brothels. Yankee Chagres was founded during the gold rush days to help with the many 49ers heading to California and back.

Back in the prime antique bottle hunting days lots of very nice and valuable mid 1800 age bottles were found. Since these photos were taken in the early 50's, the place was still pretty much virgin of digging so very rip with bottles and relics at this time..

This photo is also a great photo of the old fort on the rocky point across the river, a vantage that many have not see.

Below are two different time captures with the sandbar seen in the middle photo and then gone in the bottom photo. I have never seen the sandbar during all the the times I worked the swamps around San Lorenzo. This is a very interesting phenomenon that occurred and may still occur. I am sure that the sandbar is washed out when the spill water up river at the Gatun Spillway.

Boy....I wish I could jump back to the early 1950s and be there to dig those 49er bottles.