Discover the beauty of St. Croix at your own pace. Offering weekly high-speed ferry service between St. Thomas and St. Shipping excellence for the Virgin Islands. Your St. Croix real estate experts. Below you will find island maps of St.
Croix and the U. Virgin Islands, as well as the towns of Christiansted and Frederiksted. Croix, St. Thomas, St. John and Water Island make up the U.
Virgin Islands. Nearby to the north of St. Citizens do not required a passport for travel to and from the U. Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Carib resistance to Spanish imperialism grew, eventually culminating in an uprising on Puerto Rico in For these efforts, the Spanish Crown determined to eradicate the Caribs of St. In , the Spanish issued a royal decree aimed at ridding the island of Caribs who resisted the Europeans.
By , whether because of the royal decree or the European diseases that contributed to their depopulation, the Carib permanently abandoned St. The Spanish were not the only colonial power to influence the development of St.
The island is truly a melting pot, with stories of several South American Indian cultures, the arrival of Columbus, the Spanish encounters with the Caribs, attempts at colonization by a succession of European nations, and enslaved West Africans and their descendants. The only surviving structural evidence of the early turbulent colonial period in Virgin Islands history is the triangular earthwork fortification at Salt River begun by the Dutch. This feature is the only one of its type that has survived in the West Indies, and possibly in North America.
After the mids, the village at Salt River was relocated to another harbor on the northeast coast of St. Croix known as Bassin, later to become the town of Christiansted under the Danes. Christiansted can trace its actual establishment to when Governor Frederick Moth led a group of settlers to the site of the former French camp. The construction of a military facility for the defense and protection of a privately owned company was typical of colonial expansion during the 18th century.
The fort was to safeguard the colony in the name of the crown and protect the goods produced by the company and the local landowners from slave rebellions. Today, visitors to the park can take a self-guided tour of the fort, which was important in establishing the Danish presence in the area. With the completion of the fort, a building and settlement effort soon began on a larger scale. From almost the beginning, Governor Moth developed a plan for the entire area and guided construction.
His plan located the important company buildings and residences near the port and specified the layout of future streets, which resulted in a surprisingly uniform pattern of growth in the city for over years.
While the islands still depended on sugar for their income, management under a crown corporation was better. Christiansted was profitable and stable until the s, when the invention of a process for extracting sugar from beets reduced the market for the cane sugar grown in the West Indies, thus hitting the region with a hard economic setback.
The abolition of the slave trade in the late s and the emancipation of slaves in ended prosperous times in Christiansted and throughout the region. Before this decline, a mix of planters, slaves, government officials, fishermen, and tradesmen lived in and around Christiansted.
These people came from a variety of backgrounds and countries, including England, Germany, Holland, Ireland, and Norway. Together, they made Christiansted a vibrant urban community even though it was a tiny colony far separated from the homeland.
Both slaves and free blacks worked in Christiansted. Free blacks often worked as tradesmen, just like others in the colony. In addition to seeing the fort, visitors to the park today can get a sense of community life by touring other buildings. Self-guided walking tour brochures are available for the Steeple Building and the Scale House. Constructed in to house the first faith community established in Christiansted, the Steeple Building was originally the Church of our Lord God of Sabaoth.
Its current name comes from the steeple that served for generations as a landmark for mariners entering the harbor. In the s, the building fell into disrepair and the congregation voted to move to another space. For the next years, the building served a variety of functions for the colonial government, including a bakery, storehouse, and town hall. Built in , the Scale House regulated trade and collected duties for the crown. It had spaces for inspecting and weighing imports and exports.
Particularly interesting are the wide doors at each end of the building for the customs inspection room and the scale room through which carts of goods passed. Visitors to the park can also see the Custom House used for collecting money for the crown.
Despite efforts by the Danish government to improve trade with the West Indies, the impact from the decline in sugar and the slave trade was so great that maintaining the colony became unprofitable for the government.
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