I can actually feel the ghosts languishing at St. Croix's Estate Mount Washington. Inside the plantation's dungeon, the air is cool and damp. Dim, dusty light trickles through barred windows. I walk across the hard-packed dirt floor and touch the cold metal of a ring attached to a stout wooden beam - a ring that once held chains that once held a man.
Estate Mount Washington is a strikingly well-preserved sugar plantation and one of the highlights of the St. Croix Heritage Trail. From 1780 to 1820, St. Croix was the second-largest producer of sugar in the Caribbean, and the entire island was blanketed with plantation estates. Mount Washington's great house is now an enormous private residence, owned and meticulously restored by a local lawyer. Other buildings are remarkably intact, including the only remaining dungeon on the island.
This heritage - typical of the Caribbean's rich melange of cultures and intriguing, but sometimes cruel, history - is part of the legacy St. Croix is promoting to establish an identity for itself. So unassuming that locals call it the "sleeping virgin," St. Croix has long been overshadowed by hip, urban St. Thomas and eco-touristy St. John. But now, with its heritage trail - a self-guided tour that links ecological sites, scenic views, places of cultural and historical significance - and a swanky new casino (the only one in the USVI), St. Croix is coming into its own.
Back outside in the sun at Estate Mount Washington, free of the haunting atmosphere of the dingy cell, I walk down a dirt road with Nancy Buckingham, coordinator of the heritage trail. We follow a sign marking the remains of the village where the plantation's slaves lived. Now, the homes of the people whose labor brought prosperity to the island are just a scattering of stone walls overgrown with brush and decay, standing quietly under a blue sky.
A second plantation on the trail, St. George's, has become a botanical garden and historical attraction that hosts concerts and cultural shows and features quadrilles - a dance once popular in the islands. The grounds are split into sections according to plant species and restored plantation buildings stand among flowering bushes and clusters of indigenous trees.
"This is a 'monkey no climb,'" says Buckingham, pointing to a tall, slender tree covered with sharp spikes. The garden trail leads us to a collection of cactus planted in what was once the sugar-processing area. A new addition to St. George's is a medicinal herb garden filled with native healing plants accompanied by displays explaining the ailments they are used to treat.
One of the restored buildings is a blacksmith's shop. Together, with the refurbished manager's house that was occupied as late as 1923, the site gives a real sense of what a Caribbean plantation looked like back in the 18th and 19th centuries.
As we drive farther along the trail in Buckingham's Isuzu Trooper, armed with a map indicating locations of the island's former estates with names like Hannah's Rest, Jealousy, Good Hope and Patience Grove, she tells me that it's no surprise that St. Croix has more historical sites than most islands. The island, she says, has been under seven different flags since Columbus first claimed it for Spain in 1493. And its cities, especially, are rich with historical sites.
Founded in 1752 by the Danes as a port for their plantation exports, the city of Frederiksted has the island's only cruise-ship port. The entire city is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. It is also home to St. Croix Bike and Tours, a father-and-son operation that offers a unique way to tour the town. Mike McQueston outfits me with a full-suspension mountain bike, almost overkill for the gentle hills and flat roads here, but necessary for their interior tours of the island's tropical forest.
It's a quiet city that only seems to bustle when a ship is in, or during Harbor Nights, an evening street fair that's also staged for the ships' passengers.
We ride slowly as McQueston points out the town's main sights: Benjamin House, the only structure spared in the island's fire of 1878; the house formerly owned by a judge who was known to be fair to the slaves; and a Moravian church, the island's first place of worship. St. Patrick's, built in 1848, is a Spanish Mission-style church that would look entirely out of place if not for the addition of the welcoming arms of a Dutch-style dual staircase. Its courtyard has mahogany trees and tamarinds, the seeds of which, McQueston says, slaves hid in their hair on the voyage from Africa because they were a source of food. Clusters of tamarind trees can indicate where a slave village once stood on the island.
We bike the main road, with lush green hills on one side and a white-sand beach edging a calm strip of clear water on the other. St. Croix is unique to the USVI because, along with Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, it was formed by the last of the tectonic plate shifts that lifted the ocean floor some 20 million years ago instead of by volcanic activity, like the other Virgins.
Our last stop on the pedaling tour is the Garden of Rest, a beautiful cemetery segregated into four quadrants: Danish Lutheran, Irish Catholic, English Anglican and Moravian. The soil is so hard here that most of the graves are above ground. There are flowers and trinkets sprinkled throughout and a slight breeze moves through the air. It's a placid place of solitude, framed by a sprawling view of green rolling hills. Throughout my tour, it's the contrasts between the new and old that surprise me most.
The juxtaposition strikes me again when I pick up the heritage trail in Christiansted, St. Croix's capital city. Here, duty-free shops vie for attention next to 300-year-old structures. The Government House, built in 1747, was the palace of the Danish monarchy, the seat of government when Christiansted was the capital of the Virgin Islands. It now serves as the governor's offices and residence.
Having survived hurricanes David and Frederic in 1979, Government House was forced to close after Hurricane Hugo struck in 1989. During those 11 years, the three-story structure underwent its first major renovation since the 1700s. But before it reopened, the entire building was blessed by 20 religious leaders of varying denominations, each responsible for three or four rooms in the 64-room edifice.
Inside is a labyrinth of modern-looking, hardwood-floored offices that blend with the historic remnants of one of the building's original kitchens, which is now the employee lounge, complete with a brick oven.
On the waterfront, the air is filled with more sounds of the stirring "sleeping virgin:" the buzzing of saws and pounding of hammers reverberate everywhere as workmen construct a new boardwalk that will connect King's Alley to the seaplane ramp, providing a wonderful place for visitors to stroll and shop while enjoying the views.
Natural history is also a part of the heritage trail. And two of the most popular ecological stops along the trail are Jack's and Isaac's bays on the far east end. I arrange for an early morning visit - very early.
I'm out of bed before the alarm rings at 4:30 a.m. Snorkeling gear in hand, I hop in the Nature Conservancy truck waiting outside my hotel. I've hooked up with Nick Drayton, a ranger with the non-profit organization that now owns and manages the 301 protected acres. Jack's and Isaac's bays are included on the heritage trail map for their natural value: Aside from great snorkeling, the area is a favorite of sea turtles - green and hawksbills - during nesting and hatching season, which runs from mid-July through mid-December.
We arrive at Jack's Bay while it's still dark and, using flashlights until the sun wakes, we hike to Isaac's Bay, spotting the deep furrows in the sand where females have dragged themselves ashore to nest and seeing some of the turtles themselves as their heads pop up for air on their swim back out to sea. On our hike back, we stop to snorkel at Isaac's Bay. We are the only souls in sight, which allows us to be selfish and keep the early morning light to ourselves.
The water is warm and full of trunkfish, trumpet fish, parrot fish, sea fans and coral. As we make our way back to the car, the serene, rolling green hills make me feel as if we're the only people in the world.
Drayton shifts into four-wheel drive and we ascend a nearby steep road to the top of Goat Hill, one of the highest points on the island. From up here we look out over St. Croix, soaking in the view from Buck Island to the south coast.
"On a clear day, you can see St. John, St. Thomas, Tortola and Virgin Gorda," Drayton says.
A strong breeze blows, the air smells fresh and for a second I can almost see those other islands. But, as I turn back I realize it doesn't matter: There's still a lot to see on the island of St. Croix.
Jessica Chapman is the Web-site producer for Saveur.
Posted online 02/01/01.
