The hills, valleys and beaches of Virgin Islands National Park are breathtaking. It covers approximately 60% of the island of Saint John in the United States Virgin Islands, over 5,500 acres of adjacent ocean, plus nearly all of Hassel Island, just off the Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas harbor. 

Beyond its tropical beauty, 7,000 acres on the island of St. John help tell the complex history of civilizations – both free and enslaved – who utilized the land and the sea for more than a thousand years.

Virgin Islands National Park encompasses over half the island of St. John and almost all of Hassel Island preserving stories of the prehistoric past and over a hundred historic sites that together complete one the most undisturbed and comprehensive Caribbean landscapes.

Significant prehistoric sites are present on almost every beach and in every bay within the park. These archeological sites date from as early as 840 BC to the arrival of Columbus.

There are early nomadic hunter-gatherer Archaic Period sites, followed by early chiefdom villages, then complex ceremonial sites and each with their own burial grounds. These sites have given us a greater understanding of this Caribbean region’s prehistory, and the religious and social development of the Taino culture that greeted Columbus.

They have dramatically increased our understanding of the ancient rock art that is found throughout the Caribbean islands. We now known when Caribbean rock art was carved, why they were carved in these specific areas, such as those found in the park at Reef Bay, their purpose, religious meaning and how they reflect cultural development.

After Columbus’ arrival, the Virgin Islands’ became one of the first melting pots, made up of many cultures from around the world. European powers competed for strategic and economic control. They brought enslaved workers from Africa. Historic landscapes and architectural remains of hundreds structures from plantation estates are found throughout the park.

Ruins include windmills, animal mills, factories, great houses, terrace walls, and warehouses. In addition to these plantations are at least two thousand house sites that were occupied by the enslaved workers and their graveyards.

The Archeology Program at Virgin Islands National Park is working to illuminate the complex relationships between indigenous Caribbean cultures, European colonial powers, and enslaved Africans brought to these small islands. 

Columbus introduced sugar cane to the West Indies 

By the 1400s Europeans had developed a taste for sweets. At that time, sugar cane – a plant native to southern Asia – was the only known source for sugar, a fact that left Northern Europe dependent on Asian and Mediterranean growers as the primary suppliers of the product.

But this was soon to change. On his second voyage to the West Indies in 1493, Columbus brought sugar cane to the tropical Americas where it flourished.

The dominant European nations of the period all raced to establish American colonies, and by the seventeenth century, sugar cane had become almost exclusively a New World crop.

Annaberg stands today in bold testament to a time when “sugar was king.” The ruins represent a colonial-era processing plant known as a “sugar works. It was designed and built exclusively for the large-scale production 0f raw cane-sugar and its two valuable byproducts, rum and molasses. It was constructed between 1797 and 1805, at the pinnacle of the great sugar boom at the turn of the 19th century.

Denmark and the West Indies

Before their purchase by the United States in 1917, the US Virgin Islands were a colony of Denmark. The Danes, however, were relative latecomers to the Caribbean. By the time Denmark  successfully established its first West Indies colony on St. Thomas in 1672, all of the larger and more agriculturally productive islands of the Caribbean had long since been occupied and claimed by other nations.

With arable land at a premium, it was not long before the Danish-sanctioned settlers on St. Thomas sought to expand their colonial holdings. On March 25, 1718, Govemor Eri Bradel, accompamed by five soldiers, twenty planters, and sixteen enslaved laborers,
landed in Coral Bay to claim the Island of St. John in the name of the Danish Crown.

As with all European colonies throughout the Eastern Caribbean, the heavy burden of 
establishing and manning plantations fell to thousands of enslaved Africans and their descendants, who rapidly came to represent the vast majority of the region’s population.

The Annaberg Plantation

The diverse backgrounds of the inhabitants of the Danish West Indies are clearly evident in a list of Annaberg’s  owners. The first deeded land holding in the area was taken up in 1721 by a French Huguenot refugee, Isaac Constantin.

Upon his death, ownership of the plantation passed to his son-In-law, a Dane, Mads Larsen; and, in 1758, the property was purchased by Salomon Zeeger, a Dulch immigrant from the Island of St. Eustatius. It was Zeeger who named the property Annaberg (meaning Anna’s Mountain). 

In 1796, James Murphy, an Irish-born merchant and slave trader based on St. Thomas, purchased Annaberg along with a number of neighboring properties and combined them to form a single vast sugar estate.

Upon his acquisition of the property, Murphy set out to construct a new state-of-the-art “sugar works and tower windmill on the site of the former Zeeger plantation, and a grand, estate house on a hilltop east of Water Lemon Bay.

By the time of his death in November of 1808, James Murphy had become the single largest producer of sugar on St. John. His combined land holdings totaled nearly 1,300 acres, and 662 enslaved workers toiled on his properties.

Although some modifications associated with production downsizing were made to the Annaberg factory in the mid nineteenth century, it is the ruins of the sugar works built
during James Murphy’s ownership that are encountered on the site today.

James Murphy’s heirs retained title to Annaberg until 1862. Throughout most of this period Annaberg remained a profitable sugar estate, with production levels exceeding 100,000 pounds of raw sugar per year as late as 1845.

However, soil depletion, sagging sugar prices, and the emancipation of enslaved laborers throughout the Danish West Indies in 1848, all served to drive down sugar production. By 1861, Annaberg’s sugar crop yielded less than five thousand pounds of raw sugar.

In 1863, Annaberg was purchased by Thomas Letsom Lloyd of Tortola. For a time, Lloyd struggled to keep the estate in operation, but in 1867 a violent hurricane, followed by a series of devastating earthquakes, finally put an end to sugar production at Annaberg.

With his factory in ruin, in the spring of 1871 Thomas Lloyd sold Annaberg to his property overseer, George Francis, and returned to Tortola.

George Francis was born enslaved on the Annaberg plantation. His name first appears in the earliest existing census for the property compiled in 1835, in which he was recorded as a thirteen-year-old field laborer.

Over the course of his life, George Francis encountered opportunities that in his youth must have seemed wholly unimaginable. By 1860, he had gained the position of estate overseer, and two years later he received outright title to a 2-acre parcel of land on the Annaberg property from the will of his former owner, Hans H. Berg.

In 1871, George Francis acquirred the entire Annaberg estate from Thomas Lloyd and immediately set out to renew sugar production on the property. At the time of his death in 1875, Francis had recently completed the construction of a new sugar-boiling house and horse mill on the isthmus between Mary’s Creek and Francis Bay. It was the last facility ever to produce sugar on the Annaberg property.

After George Francis’ death, his family found it difficult to cope with the finances of the estate, and in 1876 Annaberg was sold to St Thomas merchant Antoine Anduze. Anduze
retainted an overseer on his St John properties and converted the former Annaberg crop lands to pasture. Annaberg remained in the hands of Antoine Anduze and
his heirs until 1899.

In that year, George Francis’ son, Carl Emanuel Francis, repurchased Annaberg when the property was put up for auction due to delinquent taxes . Carl Francis and his family resided amidst the ruins 0f Annaberg until just prior to his death in 1936.

Like most St. John residents of this period, the Francis family lived a somewhat frugal and self-sufficient existence. They grazed livestock, grew provisional crops, and produced quicklime and charcoal.

Over the years Carl Francis rose to be a prominent and respected island figure. He served as the St. John representative to the Colonial Council, acted as Clerk and Lay Reader to the
Nazareth Lutheran Congregation in Cruz Bay, and raised the first United States Flag over St John in the transfer ceremonies held at the Cruz Bay Battery on ApriI 15, 1917.

Carl Francis sold the Annaberg estate t0 Herman O. Creque in 1935. It was from the Creque heirs that the Jackson Hole PreserVe purchased the property in 1954. Annaberg was officially turned over to the National Park Service in 1956.

Virgin Island Animals 

Virgin Islands National Park is rich in natural resources. There are 140 species of birds, 302 species of fish, 7 species of amphibians, 22 species of mammals and 740 species of plants inhabiting the Island.

In addition there are about 50 coral species and numerous gorgonians, and sponges providing St. Johnian’s and visitors with some of the best snorkeling and diving in the world.

The only mammal native to St. John is the bat. Some bat species are important pollinators of many floral species on the island as well as important seed dispersal agents for many species of fruit bearing trees and shrubs. Other species of bats consume vast quantities of insects, including mosquitoes.

Present day St. John does have many other species of animals that are not native to the island or even the tropics. These include: deer, goats, sheep, donkeys, cats, dogs, mongoose and pigs.

You will see many of these animals roaming the streets of St. John. Please do not feed them or leave food where they can access it as human food is bad for their health.

Virgin Islands Habitat

Virgin Islands National Park, located in the tropical Atlantic, contains examples of terrestrial, coastal and marine ecosystems. These include various types of dry to moist forests, salt ponds, beaches, mangroves, seagrass beds and coral reefs. The land is mountainous, with average slopes being 30 percent. Bordeaux mountain, 1286 feet high, plunges sharply to the sea.

From the peaks of St. John’s steep mountains to beaches and mangrove shorelines to offshore seagrass beds and algal plains, Virgin Islands National Park protects an interesting and diverse variety of plant life.

Visitors can travel from moist forests to dry cactus scrubland in minutes, each landscape telling a different story of rainfall, human impact, and slow natural change. Most of the vegetation on St. John today is recovering secondary forest with native and nonnative species competing for space. Coastal mangroves and seagrass support marine ecosystems. These plants stabilize shorelines and provide critical habitat for fish and marine invertebrates.

In 1718 the Danes established the first European settlement on St. John, and people began to clear land for plantation agriculture (mostly sugarcane and cotton), cut timber, and introduce nonnative plants and animals. As much as 90% of the island’s original vegetation was destroyed. Agriculture changed the hydrology and soil composition.

In the mid 1800s, plantation agriculture declined, and forest cover began to return to St. John. Small-scale production of charcoal and bay rum (with leaves from the Pimenta racemosa tree) began. Livestock grazing became more widespread. Introduced plants and animals compete with and damage recovering forest.

After the turn of the century and the purchase of the islands by the United States in 1917, land use on St. John changed again. People bought land to build vacation homes, and tourism began to grow. Plants now compete with people for space to grow. Plants are also important for erosion control. Terrestrial development can lead to increased erosion and damage to marine ecosystems.

In 1956, Frank Stick and Laurance Rockefeller helped to establish Virgin Islands National Park to help preserve more than half of the island. Since then, the terrestrial protected area has grown to protect more than 2/3 of St. John, most recently with the purchase of the Maho Bay watershed in 2008 in cooperation with the Trust for Public Land. These protected areas are crucial to the reforestation on St. John.

Endangered or Threatened Species in the Virgin Islands National Park

Virgin Islands National Park provides vital habitat for a number of plants and animals, both terrestrial and marine. Many of the species protected within the park are federally endangered or threatened.

• 138 bird species
• 400 reef-associated fish species
• 17 whales and dolphin species
• more than 230 invertebrate species
• 13 reptile species,
• a variety of coral and sponge species

Virgin Islands National Park also protects some of the last remaining tropical dry rain forest in the Caribbean.

In 1976, Virgin Islands National Park was one of the first protected areas to receive designation as an International Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It is one of only 30 containing both marine and terrestrial ecosystems.

The Virgin Islands have been inhabited for at least 3,000 years. Cultural resources include prehistoric archaeological sites, hundreds of historic structures, offshore shipwrecks, and museum collections that encompass artifacts dating as far back as 840 BC.

Through scientific research, park managers are able to make informed decisions to best protect park resources for future generations. Research continues to provide information on the people who have lived here throughout time. University students and other researchers visit Virgin Islands National Park and the surrounding area to conduct studies and gather information throughout the year.

Current research projects taking place include:

• Seagrass monitoring
• Sea turtle nest monitoring
• Fish counts
• Marine habitat studies
• Coral disease
• Archaeological studies

Mailing Address: 1300 Cruz Bay Creek
St. John, VI 00830
Phone:(340) 776-6201