The Panama Canal Zone was a perfect location for bottle hunting. In the days before Jimmy Carter gave the Canal away the Canal Zone was rich in treasure and easily accessible. The bottle history of the Panama Canal is rich and dates back to the time the Spanish held the territory. The Canal Zone, because of its location and physical characteristics, has always been a collecting point for people and people bring their bottles with them.
Before the Canal was dug, the Isthmus of Panama was a crossing place to get from the East to the West and back again. In the early days before the canal, travelers would sail by ship to the Isthmus and then travel by the Chagres River and by trail from one side to the other. The Isthmus is maybe 50 miles wide so the time it took to cross was just a few days. This is a lot when you think about the alternatives being travel by land 3000 miles across the continental United States or travel by sea around Cape Horn, a long and at times treacherous journey.
When I was in the Canal Zone it was possible to buy map reproductions at the library for 5 cents a square foot. I am talking copies of original maps some dating back to Spanish times. The maps were crude and beautiful art works that roughly showed the location of old towns, buildings, and trails. Those maps were indispensible when hunting for bottles.
I used Army topographical maps and a compass to navigate through the jungle. When used with the old map reproductions it was possible to get in the proximity of an old settlement, trail, or building. There were locations on the map that indicated a tavern or stopping place. The maps could only get you in the approximate location. The climate in Panama is such that the jungle grows fast, the rains come hard every year, and trash dumps become buried over time. Some of the bottles found can be many feet below the surface after 100 years or more. My best bottles are 150 to 200 years old and were dug out of the ground.
Some of the locations we hunted were called hill 87, because on the map it was 87 meters high. The sewing machine spot, because an old treadle sewing machine was there. The Dog Bottle spot, because we found our first Dog Bottle there. The Man Bottle spot because we found more than a dozen case gins with embossed standing man there. A place called "Camp 5" never yielded much and wasn't so old. We were taken there by an old man who actually worked there during the building of the Panama Canal. His name escapes me now, I'll remember it, We called him Mr. ---, Oh I can't remember, He was Alfonso's father. Alfonso was the old man's son. They lived in the jungle in a tin roofed hut. Mr. Mitee, that was his name. Mr. Mitee, pronounced "Might Tee", Mr. Mitee came from Jamaica man. And he had the accent to prove it. Just a nice man and a good man with a wooden leg. He took us to several spots in the jungle but as I said they dated to the time just after the American construction of the Canal and during the first World War. Bottles from this era aren't old enough for my bottle collection.
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