Elsie Grieser and the Panama Canal

The first woman to paddle a canoe the length of the Panama Canal from Pacific to Atlantic Ocean was Elsie Grieser, pictured here in the Culebra Cut with her brother, Henry, in a sponson canoe in November 1922.They made the forty-two mile journey in fifteen hours, with a headwind the entire way. Elsie was born in Whitestone (Queens), New York, and at the time of the trip she was a stenographer and photographer in the Canal Zone.