- Where
- US Virgin Islands
eastern Caribbean - Coordinates
- 18.3420° N
64.7860° W - Biome
- Secondary tropical dry and moist forest,
mangrove, seagrass and coral reef - The island
- About 19 square miles
- The park
- c. 60% of St John — roughly 7,300 acres
on land, 5,650 submerged - Established
- Legislation 2 August 1956
Park opened 1 December 1956 - Best visited
- December–April; hurricane season Jun–Nov
Walked downhill through thick green forest to a pool with carvings above it, and was told on the way that almost none of this forest is old — that the whole hillside was cleared, terraced and worked, and that the low stone walls I kept stepping over were built to hold the soil. I have been thinking about those walls ever since. They are everywhere once you see one.
The short answer
St John is the smallest of the three main US Virgin Islands, about nineteen square miles, and roughly sixty per cent of it is Virgin Islands National Park — some 7,300 acres of land plus 5,650 acres of submerged reef and seagrass. The park exists because Laurance S. Rockefeller, who first visited in 1952, quietly bought around five thousand acres over several years and donated them to the federal government through his conservation organisation. President Eisenhower signed the establishing legislation on 2 August 1956 and the park opened that December. It protects coral reef, forest, Taíno petroglyphs and the ruins of the Danish colonial sugar economy that once covered the island.
Why it's worth knowing
The word used about St John, over and over, is unspoiled. It is the wrong word, and the right one is more interesting.
Danish planters began establishing sugar and cotton estates here in 1718. They cleared the tropical forest and terraced the hillsides — by hand, by enslaved people — and by the 1760s there were close to ninety plantations on an island of nineteen square miles. Almost none of St John was forest. Nearly all of it was worked ground.
Then the sugar economy collapsed. Emancipation came in the Danish West Indies in 1848, beet sugar undercut cane, and the estates were progressively abandoned. When the United States bought the islands from Denmark in 1917 for their strategic position, St John’s economy had already failed. And the forest, having nothing to stop it, came back.
So what a visitor walks through today is second growth over an industrial landscape. The stone terraces are still on the hillsides under the leaf litter. Mill ruins stand in the trees. It is one of the more complete examples anywhere of a working landscape reverting — and it looks so convincingly like wilderness that the park has to explain, repeatedly, that it isn’t.
Underneath that is the harder history. In November 1733, enslaved people on St John seized the Danish fort and took control of most of the island. They held it for about six months, until troops from French Martinique suppressed the rising in May 1734. It was among the earliest and longest slave revolts anywhere in the Americas, and it happened on ground that is now a beach holiday.
None of which makes St John less beautiful. Trunk Bay genuinely is one of the finest beaches in the Caribbean. But the island reads completely differently once you know that the forest is a consequence rather than a survival.
The field notes
Annaberg, and what is left standing
The most intact sugar complex on the island is Annaberg, on a promontory above Leinster Bay, operating from the 1780s until 1867. A stone windmill tower about forty feet high still stands, and around it are the foundation of the horse mill, a boiling house with five copper kettle bases visible in the floor, a rum still, and the quarters where enslaved workers lived.
A self-guided trail walks you through the process in order — cutting, crushing, boiling, distilling — which is the useful way to understand it, because the ruins are an industrial plant rather than a picturesque one. Every stage of that process was manual and dangerous, and the boiling house in a Caribbean summer is not difficult to imagine.
Nearby at Leinster Bay stand guardhouse ruins listed on the National Park Service’s Underground Railroad Network to Freedom — a designation that records this island as part of the geography of escape, not only of confinement.
Three thousand years before the Danes
The park protects evidence of human presence going back more than three thousand years, and the most striking of it is on the Reef Bay Trail.
At a freshwater pool near the foot of the valley, Taíno petroglyphs are carved into the rock face above the water. Their meaning is not settled, but the setting is not accidental: a permanent pool on a dry island, with the carvings positioned so that they and their reflection meet at the waterline.
The Reef Bay Trail runs downhill through forest past the petroglyphs and a sugar mill ruin to the coast. It is the island’s signature walk, and the Park Service has historically run ranger-led versions with a boat pickup at the bottom — worth checking, because the walk back up is considerably less charming than the walk down.
The reefs, and 2017
The park is as much marine as terrestrial. Trunk Bay has an underwater interpretive snorkelling trail with markers set along the reef, which was a novel idea when it was installed and is still an unusually good introduction for people who have never snorkelled. The submerged acreage was added to the park in 1962, and in 2001 the separate Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument protected a further 12,708 acres of federal submerged land off the island.
In September 2017 two Category 5 hurricanes — Irma and, two weeks later, Maria — passed over the US Virgin Islands. The damage on St John was severe: forest stripped, trails closed, infrastructure destroyed, and the Caneel Bay resort, the one Rockefeller himself built, damaged beyond reopening. Recovery has taken years and is not uniformly complete.
The forest, characteristically, came back fastest. It has done this before.
A gift with a resort attached
The Rockefeller story is usually told as straightforward philanthropy, and it is worth a little more precision than that.
Laurance Rockefeller visited in 1952, bought land quietly over several years through Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc. — an organisation his father had founded for exactly this sort of project — and gave roughly five thousand acres to the nation. The Rockefeller Brothers Fund contributed a million dollars in 1956 for the park’s development. The conservationist Frank Stick was central to assembling the land.
He also owned the Caneel Bay Estate on the island and built a commercial resort there, which opened the same year as the park. The conservation and the development were the same project, by the same person, at the same time. The establishing legislation capped the park’s holdings on St John at 9,485 acres, which is the kind of detail that indicates the arrangement was negotiated rather than simply given.
None of that diminishes the outcome — sixty per cent of a Caribbean island is protected and undeveloped, which is close to unique in the region. But “a man bought an island and gave it away” is a simpler story than what happened.
- Walk the Reef Bay Trail downhill and arrange a boat back up.
- Go to Annaberg and follow the process in order, not the view.
- Snorkel the marked trail at Trunk Bay, then swim at Waterlemon Cay.
- Look down at the ground on any forest walk. Find a terrace.
- Read about 1733 before you come, not after.
A terrace, under leaves. On almost any hillside walk on St John you cross low stone walls running along the contour, half-buried in leaf litter and easy to mistake for natural rock. They are retaining terraces, built to hold soil for sugar cane on slopes too steep to farm otherwise, cut and stacked by hand by enslaved people. The forest has grown straight over them, and they are the reason the forest is here at all.
Tally, in the marginHalf-buried, mistakable for natural rock, and the entire reason the forest is standing here. Nobody built them for the forest.
Getting there
How to get there. There is no airport on St John. You fly to St Thomas (Cyril E. King, STT), which has direct flights from several US cities, then take a taxi across the island to Red Hook and the passenger ferry to Cruz Bay — about twenty minutes. A longer ferry runs from Charlotte Amalie. Allow more time than the map suggests: the St Thomas road crossing can be slow.
Getting around. Taxis are open-air safari trucks and run set routes and rates. Hiring a jeep gives you the north shore beaches and the trailheads on your own schedule — roads are steep, narrow and winding, and driving is on the left, in left-hand-drive American cars, which catches out almost everyone for the first day.
What to do first. Trunk Bay for the underwater trail. Annaberg for the sugar works. The Reef Bay Trail downhill through the forest to the petroglyphs, checking whether a ranger-led hike with boat return is running. Waterlemon Cay off Leinster Bay for the best easy snorkelling on the island.
When to go. December to April is the dry season and the busy one. Hurricane season runs June to November, peaking August to October, and the 2017 storms are a reminder that this is a real consideration rather than a formality.
Practical notes. The park is free to enter, though Trunk Bay charges a beach fee. Accommodation is limited by design — the park boundary constrains development — and books out well ahead in season. Bring reef-safe sunscreen; the reefs here are protected and are already under pressure from warming.
Mark this place
Common questions
Is the forest on St John natural?
No — it is second growth. Danish planters cleared the island for sugar and cotton from 1718, and by the 1760s nearly ninety plantations operated on nineteen square miles, with hillsides terraced by enslaved labour. The estates were abandoned as the sugar economy collapsed through the nineteenth century, and the forest regrew. Stone terraces and mill ruins remain throughout the park.
How much of St John is national park?
Roughly sixty per cent — about 7,300 acres of land, plus 5,650 acres of submerged reef and seagrass added in 1962. A further 12,708 acres of federal submerged land off the island was protected in 2001 as the Virgin Islands Coral Reef National Monument. The establishing legislation capped the park’s land holdings on St John at 9,485 acres.
Who created Virgin Islands National Park?
Laurance S. Rockefeller, who first visited St John in 1952, bought roughly five thousand acres over several years through Jackson Hole Preserve, Inc. and donated the land to the federal government. The conservationist Frank Stick was central to assembling it, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave a million dollars toward the park’s development in 1956.
When was Virgin Islands National Park established?
President Eisenhower signed the establishing legislation on 2 August 1956, and the park opened on 1 December that year, becoming the twenty-ninth unit of the national park system. Both dates appear in sources as the establishment date and neither is incorrect.
What was the 1733 St John slave revolt?
In November 1733, enslaved people on St John seized the Danish fort and took control of most of the island, holding it for about six months until troops from French Martinique suppressed the rising in May 1734. It was among the earliest and longest-lasting slave revolts in the Americas.
What is at Annaberg?
The most intact sugar production complex on St John, operating from the 1780s to 1867. A stone windmill tower about forty feet high still stands above Leinster Bay, alongside the horse mill foundation, a boiling house with five copper kettle bases visible, a rum still and the quarters of enslaved workers. A self-guided trail explains the production process.
Where are the petroglyphs on St John?
On the Reef Bay Trail, carved into rock above a freshwater pool near the foot of the valley. They are Taíno in origin and part of evidence for more than three thousand years of human presence on the island. Their meaning is not settled, though the carvings are positioned so that they meet their own reflection at the waterline.
Did the 2017 hurricanes damage St John?
Severely. Hurricanes Irma and Maria, both Category 5, passed over the US Virgin Islands two weeks apart in September 2017. Forest was stripped, trails closed and infrastructure destroyed, and the Caneel Bay resort — built by Rockefeller and opened the year the park was established — was damaged beyond reopening. Recovery has taken years and is not uniformly complete.