A stepped marble monument erected in 1928 to Colonel George Washington Goethals, the US Army engineer who oversaw the construction of the Panama Canal from 1907 to 1914. Goethals replaced two previous chief engineers who quit under the strain of the project's complexity and political pressure, and brought it to completion on budget and ahead of schedule.
The monument stands in a small plaza in the heart of Balboa's administrative district, surrounded by the wide boulevards and whitewashed bungalows of the former Canal Zone government quarter. It's a brief stop rather than a major attraction, but the setting — orderly, quiet, with a distinct mid-century American-colonial atmosphere — gives you a good sense of what Balboa was and why it felt so different from the rest of Panama.