Photo of the Week

This week we are still in Colon, but many years before the Stranger's Club existed or much of Colon known in modern times. I found this photo 1884 photo on-line and is part of a photo collection at the Wichita State University Library Special Collections. When I saw this photo, I had to post it. This photo was taken when Panama was still part of Columbia, the French were in the early days of their attempt to build a Canal, Yellow Fever and Malaria were still in full for throughout the country and everything was still pretty wild. In the photo, it appears that the town of Colon was still mostly swamp as seen here in this photo. There are board walks everywhere to get from a - b. The title on the photo says, "Colon - Calabousse" which calabousse is Spanish for jail. So here is the colon jail of the period with police in uniform posing for the photo and what struck me the most with this photo were the caskets sitting near one board walk waiting for and occupant. Talk about wild times. I sure wouldn't have wanted to live there back then!