Keeping to the theme of railroad stations, here is an excellent photo of the Gorgona Train Station in the prime days of the old construction town of Gorgona.  The town of Gorgona was located directly across  from the Gamboa Air Strip, just north of the Dredging Division Headquarters in Gamboa.  I have done numerous photos about Gorgona in the past here on CZ Images.  Gorgona is by far my most favorite construction day town.  Gorgona is nothing but an island today and parts of the town under water.  I have spent many hours walking the old town looking for relics and bottles.  I have learned so much about this old town reading about it, studying photos and hands on walking and diving around the island.  Gorgona was established back in the Spanish years as a point where travelers coming up the Chagres River from Fort San Lorenzo would depart their cayucas and proceed on foot on the Gorgona Trail which eventually connected to the Las Cruces Trail.  Evidently, there was a very bad set of rapids between Gorgona and the town of Cruces where the the Las Cruces trail began.  The section of the Chagres River that had these rapids is now buried deep in fill dirt that has made up the towns of Gamboa and Santa Cruz.

Anyway, this week's photo of the week is a really great shot of the old train station and wonderful old residential buildings along main street Gorgona.  I am not sure why there was such a big crowd at the station on this day, but must have been a special day.  As mentioned in last week's photo of the week, this station is the standard construction design of the American Construction Day towns railroad stations.  See more old stations of this type by clicking here.

As I said earlier, I have walked just about every square foot of the Gorgona Island and what you see in this photo is mostly under water today.  The old railroad bed basically ran between the front island and back island.  You can see where the rail line ran behind the front island as a channel of water separating the islands.  While walking the rear island, I found the foundations for the large residental buildings as you see in this photo.  It was so very interesting walking these islands.  I hope to get a boat and revisit these islands when I visit Panama this coming February.

Long live the history of our Ditch Digger heritage.