The Darién Gap: The Break in the Pan-American Highway

In 1923, American nations dreamed of a single road connecting the continents from Alaska to Argentina. This Pan-American Highway would be a 30,000-kilometre ribbon of asphalt fostering continental unity. Decades later, the vision is almost complete. Almost. The highway stops dead at the edge of a great wilderness: the Darién Gap. This 106-kilometre stretch of roadless jungle and swamp between Panama and Colombia is the only missing link. Its terrain is so unforgiving that a 17th-century Scottish colony there ended in total disaster and national bankruptcy. The dream of a united highway has always broken against this wall of mountains and marsh. The question was never about the vision, but about the brutal reality of this one impassable place.