realms of coral, master architect of the reef. The underwater trail is not quite for everyone. It requires a moderate degree of swimming skill, considering it reaches a depth of ten feet. But the Virgin Islands National Park, a treasure of natural history and scenery on land and underwater, is for everyone, in the same sense as all the rest of our twenty-nine National Parks. The Virgin Islands are within easy reach. I flew there from Friendship Airport, near Washington, D. C., by jet, in four and a half hours. The flight from Miami takes only two hours. Leaving Chicago after breakfast, you could still reach the Virgin Islands in time for an invigorating swim or a snorkel before dinner. Accommodations in winter, when the Virgin Islands are a fashionable retreat from Northern cold weather, admittedly are expensive. Summer is another story. The setting remains unchanged, the climate is mild, but rates drop appreciably. Summer-cottage rates are around $15 per person, including meals—one of the best vacation buys of the year for what you get in food, service, and beach-front glory. Then, too, there is camping; as far as I can determine, the campground on St. John is the first and only one in the entire West Indies. Campers have been given a superb sheltered beachcomber setting at Hawknest Bay, complete with tent platforms, hammock shelters, tables, and grills. You can either bring your own gear or rent it in the little town of Cruz Bay, two miles off. Stores in the village sell canned and dried foods but no meats or vegetables, so campers can expect to rely on fishing—as they do almost everywhere. ST. JOHN, two-thirds of which is occupied by the National Park, constitutes a small but priceless fragment of America, measuring nine miles long and five miles wide. The Park was established in 1956, none too soon. The past few years have seen the unending discovery and commercial development of one "unspoiled" West Indies beach after another, in the same pattern that has swept up and down the Atlantic Coast of continental United States. In time, only St. John may be left to show sparkling beaches, tropical forests, Danish ruins, and magnificent coral reefs in their untouched state. St. Croix and St. Thomas have their unique glories, too. Men have lived on these islands for several thousand years. Among the earliest were the Arawaks, who farmed peaceably near the beaches. Then came the ferocious Caribs, a hungry band of aborigines who were not above cooking their enemies for dinner. When Christopher Columbus touched St. Croix briefly on his second voyage, the Caribs greeted him with a volley of poisoned arrows, and he proceeded on his way. On that trip Columbus named the myriad islands in honor of St. Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins. St. Croix, the largest island, clings to its colonial architecture and history, but Danish, rather than American. In Christiansted, the main city (population 4200), visitors experience the flavor of the past, recalling the time when this was one of the wealthiest islands in the Indies, its planters thriving on slavery, sugar, and rum. The Danish influence crops up repeatedly, unexpectedly, and pleasantly. Everywhere are the typically Scandinavian archways, decorative architecture, and street names. The Danes acquired the Virgin Islands in the 1700's as their sole possession in America. Here they established sugar plantations, built their estate houses on high breezy hills, and prospered until the mid-Nineteenth century, when sugar prices fell and the slaves were freed. Now crumbling ruins of one stone mill after another dot the lush landscape of St. Croix, and the estate houses have been incorporated into resort hotels and guesthouses. There is no lack of modernity on St. Thomas, either. "I wouldn't call this a Caribbean boom," said my friend Darwin Creque, the deputy commissioner of trade (and a Harvard man), "just a St. Thomian boomlet." We were standing on the veranda at Government House, headquarters of the Presidentially appointed Governor, overlooking the red-roofed houses and beautiful, sweeping harbor of Charlotte Amalie, a popular stop with cruise ships. An odd fact of history is that the U. S. paid the Danes $25,000,000 for the Virgin Islands in 1917, solely to keep them out of German hands, and promptly forgot all about them. Now tourists spend just about $25,000,000 yearly in the Islands, while the growing St. Thomas colony of realtors, builders, architects, bankers, and stockbrokers is ever adding to prosperity and "property values." Speaking of values, the twenty-five shops between Queen's Street and the Waterfront Promenade offer fantastic bargains from all over the world—Danish silver, French perfume, Swiss watches, liquors, exotic fabrics from the Far East, aqualung equipment, underwater cameras—all because St. Thomas is a duty-free port. And for the benefit of those who come this way, may it always remain so! ST. THOMAS is matchless as a resort island. There is no rainy season nor high humidity. The landscape is brightened with showy hibiscus, red oleander, and purple bougainvillea. If you have lots of money you can rent a yacht, or bring your own, and sail the bluest blue waters in the world. If you have more energy than money you can go aqualung diving and visit sunken sailing ships. You can take an excellent day-long trip by ferry, then by jeep to explore the National Park, snorkeling on the nature trail at Trunk Bay or lunching at Caneel Bay. On St. Thomas itself, you can swim at Magens Bay, a classic palm-fringed tropical beach, which the Virgin Islanders have wisely reserved as a park for the use of all. Or you can drive to Signal Mountain, 1500 feet high, and look down on the beach and the sparkling Caribbean from the Mountain Top Hotel, home of the banana daiquiri. And after sundown there are many types of night-life, from native calypso spots, totally informal, to dinner-dancing at the luxury hotels. But despite the leisure, fun, and good company of the other islands, I still confess a preference for St. John and the National Park, where the life communities of the land and the great underwater world meet at the seashore and are permitted to pursue their unending natural course. ON THIS LITTLE ISLAND, where roads are meager and rocky and development is restrained, the grandeur of natural forces becomes as clear and unmistakable as at the Grand Canyon. The course of its history began over 100 million years ago, when volcanoes erupted deep in the ocean and the buckling crust of the earth raised rock islands above the surface of the sea. Ever since then, the beaches of St. John have been a zone of arriving life, with ocean currents and each new tide delivering animals and plants, insects, eggs, seeds, and seedlings from other lands to form new colonies here. Meanwhile, the coral reefs have formed off-shore a world of flowers that are not plants but tiny animals of the subtropic seas. The coral gardens derive their vivid colors from tiny organisms living within them, but their real time of animated bloom is at night. Then the reef comes alive. From every branch and tower and domed facade, the tiny coral animals thrust out their tentacled heads to filter food from the surging streams of underwater life. Continued on page 13 Fritz Henle—Monkmeyer The best equipment for a tour of the underwater trail is simple gear—air tube, face mask, & fins. Suburbia Today, August 1961 11
Coral Gables Historical Archive