The Chagres River (Spanish: Río Chagres) is a river in central Panama. The southwest part of the river in dammed and forms Lake Gatún, an artificial lake that constitutes part of the Panama Canal.The dam is 1.5 miles long and slightly under 0.5 mile wide at its base. The construction of the dam involved building 2 walls along its length, using excavated rock, primarily from the Culebra Cut. The space between the walls was then built up with clay. When the clay dried it adopted concrete qualities. This dam contains 16.9 million cubic metres of rock and clay which is equivalent to about one tenth of the entire excavation of the canal. To the northwest it drains northwest into the Caribbean Sea. For the Second World War frigate class, see River class frigate The Murray River in Australia A river is a large natural waterway. ... Scrivener Dam, Canberra Australia, was engineered to withstand a once-in-5000-years flood event A dam (a common Teutonic word, compare to Dutch dam, Swedish and German damm, and the Gothic verb faurdammjan, to block up) is a barrier across flowing water that obstructs, directs or retards the flow... Ships follow marked channels amongst the hilltop islands. ... A reservoir (French: réservoir) is an artificial lake created by flooding land behind a dam. ... Panama Canal The Panama Canal is 82 kilometres (51 miles) long and cuts through the isthmus of Panama, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. ... Map of Central America and the Caribbean The Caribbean Sea is a tropical body of water adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean and southeast of the Gulf of Mexico. ...

The river was the correct answer to the winning question of the 2005 National Geographic Bee. A 1999 National Geography Bee contestant with his chaperones. ...