When did Gatun Lake join the Culebra Cut?
On the afternoon of October 10, 1913, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson pushed a button in Washington, D.C., to blast a dike at Gamboa. The signal, sent by telegraph from Washington to New York, then to Galveston, and from there to Panama, was almost instantaneous. Culebra Cut had almost totally been flooded and became an extension of Gatun Lake.