If you ever get the chance, checkout the canal museum in Casco Viejo in Panama City - it has tons of the original surveys conducted that have alternate sites for the canal.
Here's what I wrote after my visit [1]
The number one attraction in town is obviously The Canal and before visiting I make a stop at the museum in Casco Viejo which is amazing considering the tiny $2USD admission price. My engineering background means I’m fascinated by the surveying work that was undertaken before construction began. One map in particular shows proposed routes through Tehuantepec in Mexico, through lake Nicaragua, through a couple of different places in Panama and finally one using a river mostly in modern-day Colombia. The decision didn’t actually come down to the “shortest” distance to dig as you might think, but primarily on how the mountain range through Central America would be dealt with. The final location chosen meant it was possible to create a huge in-land lake and use locks to elevate the ships 28 meters to that level.
One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task.
The museum is so good I went back two days in a row.
"One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task."
I think you have misinterpreted the history. De Lesseps proposed a sea-level canal, and got his way. The French attempt at doing that lost a huge amount of money.
> Eight years, 200 million dollars, and more than ten thousand lost lives later, de Lesseps accepted reality and switched to de Lépinay’s stair-step plan. Lock-works and gates were ordered from Gustave Eiffel. Sadly, the canal enterprise was too far gone and could not be rescued, resulting in the largest financial collapse of the nineteenth century.
Here's what I wrote after my visit [1]
The number one attraction in town is obviously The Canal and before visiting I make a stop at the museum in Casco Viejo which is amazing considering the tiny $2USD admission price. My engineering background means I’m fascinated by the surveying work that was undertaken before construction began. One map in particular shows proposed routes through Tehuantepec in Mexico, through lake Nicaragua, through a couple of different places in Panama and finally one using a river mostly in modern-day Colombia. The decision didn’t actually come down to the “shortest” distance to dig as you might think, but primarily on how the mountain range through Central America would be dealt with. The final location chosen meant it was possible to create a huge in-land lake and use locks to elevate the ships 28 meters to that level. One French guy proposed digging deep enough to eliminate the need for locks, though it was decided this would be too great a task.
The museum is so good I went back two days in a row.
[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-panama-canal