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Photo of the Week
I found some old black and white photos taken of a few scouting events. I think today's photo is very special in Panama's history. Here we have Explore Scouts who have complete the hike on the Las Cruces trail from the Chagres River to this little colonial bridge entering the Panama City. These youth were very fortunate that resources to participate in, like the Explore Scouts and walking the very historic trail and now resting on a historic little bridge. The
back gate of Curundu into Panama City was near a location of a Spanish
colonial bridge that was part of the Las Cruces trail. This
bridge was built over the Rio Curundú
back in the colonial days of Spain's occupation of Panama. We
used to walk over to this old bridge to study it when we went to the
Curundú
Chinese Garden by the back gate. It was a primitive bridge like
those in the old city of Panama or Panama Viejo like the Kings bridge
which still stands today because of the care it has received over the
year by the government of Panama. Unfortunately this little
Curundu river bridge no longer stands. The
river had various names in colonial times (Hondo or del Puente) and
became the starting point from the new Panama City to the Camino
de Cruces with the
construction of a stone bridge over the river, which
existed until 1997 when it collapsed and its remains were left at the
bottom of the river. The
bases and other parts of the bridge that made up the Camino de Cruces
are at the bottom of the Curundú River. Inac has allocated 574
thousand dollars for the Puente del Rey (Kings Bridge in Panama Viejo)
and the Church of San Francisco de la Montaña. The
newspaper La Prensa found vestiges of the old bridge that was part of
the Camino de Cruces, near the Santa Fe hospital and the Frangipani
road. The
collapse was due to its age and the lack of initiatives for its
conservation, despite the fact that local scientists such as Stanley
Heckadon insistently warned about this possibility before it happened. Below is a very bad photo that was in the La Prensa newspaper article. So sad that this little bridge is now a forgotten piece of Panama's history.
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