Chagres, Panama - native village - postcard by Maduro c.1950s

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Chagres District (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃaɣɾes]) is a district (distrito) of Colón Province in Panama. The population according to the 2000 census was 9,191.^[1]The district covers a total area of 446 km². The capital lies at the city of Nuevo Chagres.^[1]

Chagres (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈtʃaɣɾes]), once the chief Atlantic port on the isthmus of Panama, is now an abandoned village at the historical site of Fort San Lorenzo (Spanish: Fuerte de San Lorenzo). The fort's ruins and the village site are located about 8 miles (13 km) west of Colón, on a promontory overlooking the mouth of the Chagres River.

In 1502, during his fourth and final voyage, Christopher Columbus discovered the Chagres River.

By 1534, the Monarchy of Spain had, following its conquest of Peru, established a rainy-season gold route over the isthmus of Panama—Las Cruces Trail—most of which consisted of the Chagres River. The trail connected the Pacific port of Panama City to the mouth of the Chagres, from whence Peru's plunder would sail to Spain's storehouses in the leading Atlantic ports of the isthmus: Nombre de Dios, at first; and, later, Portobelo. (The dry-season, overland route—the Camino Real—connected Panama City with those ports directly.)^[2]

Attracted to the treasure, pirates began attacking Panama's coast around 1560. To protect the Atlantic terminus of Las Cruces Trail, Spain built Fort San Lorenzo at the Chagres River's mouth. From 1587 to 1599, the fortifications evolved into a sea-level battery.^[3]

In 1670, buccaneer Henry Morgan ordered an attack that left Fort San Lorenzo in ruins. He invaded Panama City the following year, using San Lorenzo as his base of operations.

In the 1680s, the Spanish constructed a new fort 80 feet (24 m) above the water. Set on a cliff overlooking the entrance to the harbor, the fort was protected on the landward side by a dry moat with a drawbridge. During this time, the town of Chagres was established under the protection of the fort.^[4]

In 1739 and 1740, British Admiral Edward Vernon attacked the Spanish fortifications at Portobelo and Chagres. With the destruction of Portobelo's fort, Spain abandoned trade there, instead strengthening its fortifications at Chagres,^[5] and, upstream, Gatun.^[3] With the decline of Portobelo, Chagres surpassed it as the chief Atlantic port of the isthmus.^[6]

By the middle of the 18th century, however, the Spanish had largely abandoned both of the old trails over the isthmus, preferring to sail around the tip of South America at Cape Horn. For over a century, Fort San Lorenzo was used as a prison.^[3]

The 1848 finding of gold in California stimulated new vitality at the mouth of the Chagres River. Westbound prospectors who preferred to avoid crossing the "Great American Desert" or rounding Cape Horn would follow the old path of the Las Cruces Trail, beginning their transcontinental journey at "Yankee Town"^[7] or "Yanqui Chagres"^[8]—the wild-west boomtown that sprang up on the bank opposite the original village and fortress.

The rebirth of Chagres' importance was short-lived. Although the advent of steamboat service on the Chagres River had, by 1853, shortened the time required to cross the isthmus from several days to about twelve hours, the 1855 completion of the Panama Railway further reduced the transcontinental travel time to about three hours.^[9] As a result, the railway’s Atlantic terminus, Colón, became Panama's Atlantic port, and Chagres receded from importance.^[6]