Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Eco-camp up in the hills at Concordia ( Click here )
Slow down to local speed at the restaurant-bars in Coral Bay ( Click here )
Explore the impressive Annaberg Sugar Mill Ruins ( Click here )
Climb to the worth-every-drop-of-sweat clifftop view at Ram Head ( Click here )
History
Columbus did not stop at St John in 1493 on his sail along the south coast of the island.
However, most scholars credit him with naming St John (San Juan) and putting the island
on the map for Spanish adventurers, whose slave raids drove the indigenous population off
the island by the 1650s.
Starting in the late 1600s, the English and Danes battled over St John. The Danes won
out and put down roots. By 1739 St John's population stood at more than 200 white settlers
and 1400 slaves. The island's cane and cotton plantations began to mature.
In 1733 a slave revolt broke out, resulting in several deaths and widespread destruction
around the island. The Moravian Mission built its first church at Coral Bay in the late
1750s. In 1760 the settlement at Cruz Bay became an official town, and a ferry began ser-
vice between St Thomas and Cruz Bay.
Economic conditions worsened after the emancipation of slaves in 1848. When the US
took possession of St John in 1917, the island's plantations had been abandoned, the island
depopulated, and the landscape turned wild again. The last operating sugar mill, at Reef
Bay, closed in 1918.
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