City in Colón Province, Panama
About Colón, Panama
Colón is a city and seaport in Panama, beside the Caribbean Sea, lying near the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal. It is the capital of Panama's Colón Province and has traditionally been known as Panama's second city. City proper located entirely on Manzanillo Peninsula, surrounded by Limon Bay, Manzanillo Bay, and the Folks River. Since the disestablishment of the Panama Canal Zone, suburban corregimiento of Cristobal to include Fort Gulick, a former U.S. Army base, as well as the towns of Cristobal and Margarita; and recent corregimiento of Cristóbal Este now include the town of Coco Solo.
History
The city was founded in 1850 as the Atlantic terminal of the Panama Railroad, then underwent construction to meet the demand during the California Gold Rush for a fast route to California. For a number of years early in its history, the sizable United States émigré community called the town Aspinwall after Panama Railroad promoter William Henry Aspinwall, while the city's Hispanic community called it Colón in honor of Christopher Columbus. The city was founded on the western end of a treacherously marshy islet known as Manzanillo Island. As part of the construction of the Panama Railroad, the island was connected to the Panamanian mainland by a causeway and part of the island was drained to allow the erection of permanent buildings. Much of the city was destroyed in the Burning of Colón during the Colombian Civil War of 1885 and again during a massive fire in 1915. …
Climate
Like most of the Caribbean coast of Central America, Colón possesses an extremely wet tropical climate owing to the powerful, wet trade winds flowing onto high mountains throughout the year. Unlike most parts of this coast, however, February and March are sufficiently dry that Colón fits into the tropical monsoon climate (Köppen Am) category rather than a tropical rainforest climate (Af) as found in most Caribbean coastal areas. Nonetheless, the June-to-December period, with an average monthly rainfall of around 415 mm or 16.3 in, is so wet that Colón rivals La Ceiba, Honduras as the wettest sizable city in Central America.
In popular culture
The main setting of the novella "Latarnik" ("The Lighthouse Keeper", 1881) by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz is the lighthouse in Aspinwall. Colón is also the setting of Argentine writer César Aira’s short 2002 novel Varamo, and the 2002 documentary One Dollar, The Price of Life. Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Secret History of Costaguana has many scenes set in late 19C and early 20C Colón. Georges Simenon's L'Aîné des Ferchaux has Colon as a location in the second part of the novel.
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