| postionList = "x21,x24,Top3,TopLeft,x29,x12"; Select a City Aruba Bahamas Barbados Cayman Islands Dominican Republic Jamaica Puerto Rico St. Lucia St. Martin/Maarten U.S. Virgin Islands Overview The images you'd expect from a tropical island are here: stretches of beach arc into the distance, and white sails skim across water so blue and clear it stuns the senses. Red-roofed houses color the green hillsides as do the orange of the flamboyant tree, the red of the hibiscus, the magenta of the bougainvillea, and the blue stone ruins of old sugar mills. Sailing into the Caribbean on his second voyage in 1493, Christopher Columbus came upon St. Croix before the group of islands that would later be known as St. Thomas, St. John, and the British Virgin Islands (BVI). He named St. Croix "Santa Cruz," but moved on quickly after he encountered the fierce residents. As he approached St. Thomas and St. John he was impressed enough with the shapely silhouettes of the numerous islands and cays (including the BVI) to name them after Ursula and her 11,000 virgins, but he found the islands barren and moved on to explore Puerto Rico. Over the next century, as it became clear that Spain couldn't defend the entire Caribbean, other European powers began to settle the islands. In the 1600s the French were joined by the Dutch and the English on St. Croix, and St. Thomas had a mixture of European residents in the early 1700s. By 1695 St. Croix was under the control of the French, but the colonists had moved on to what is today Haiti. The island lay virtually dormant until 1733, when the Danish government bought it along with St. Thomas and St. John from the Danish West India Company. At that time settlers from St. Thomas and St. John moved to St. Croix to cultivate the island's gentler terrain. St. Croix developed a plantation economy, but St. Thomas's soil was ill suited to agriculture. There the harbor became internationally known because of its size and ease of entry; it's still hailed as one of the most beautiful seaports in the world. | |
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