The U.S. handed control of the Panama Canal to Panama
On this day · 31 December 1999
At noon on the last day of 1999, a waterway the United States had run for 85 years passed fully into Panamanian hands.
On December 31, 1999, the United States transferred full control of the Panama Canal to Panama, ending more than eight decades of American administration of the 51-mile interoceanic shortcut.
The handover fulfilled the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, signed on September 7, 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and Panamanian leader General Omar Torrijos. Those agreements abolished the Panama Canal Zone in 1979 and set a fixed deadline: at noon on the final day of the century, Panama would assume operations and primary responsibility for the canal’s defense.
The transfer was sweeping. By 2000, nearly 370,000 acres of land and some 7,000 buildings — military bases, schools, warehouses, and homes — had passed to Panama. A waterway that had defined U.S. influence in the hemisphere became, for the first time, entirely a Panamanian enterprise.
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