Cheesy Grits: Things to see in St. Croix

The Wall at Cane Bay

I mentioned earlier that we found something quite fascinating on St. Croix that was completely unrelated to our family history searches. It has to do with the geology of the area, more particularly, the fact that St. Croix and the rest of the Virgin Islands are on the edge of the Caribbean plate. If you remember your plate tectonics, which of course you do, Planet Earth's crust is divided up into huge and more or less flat pieces called "plates" that are moving around and bumping into each other. The places where the plate edges touch are quite lively, geologically speaking, and that is where we generally find "faults" and/or "rift zones," which are the places where most (but not all) earthquakes and volcanoes happen.


Most of North America is on the "North American plate," except for a sliver of California that is on the Pacific Plate. Where these two plates meet in California, you'll find the San Andreas rift zone: the Pacific Plate on the west side of the San Andreas is moving north while the North American Plate is moving more westward. And they crunch, sometimes violently. Earthquake. In 1906 during the San Francisco Earthquake, some parts of California on the Pacific Plate jumped 30 feet northward. Just like that. Small wonder that buildings fell down.

Much of the Caribbean is on the Caribbean Plate, which is getting squeezed between the North and South American Plates. (You'll remember the violent earthquake in Haiti a few years ago? Haiti is on the island of Hispaniola along the north edge of the Caribbean Plate. More plates crunching.)

St. Croix is nearly on the northern edge of the Caribbean Plate (see below). The actual plate edge is just north of Puerto Rico, where the force of the collision of the North American and Caribbean Plates has caused the southeastern edge of the North American plate to be forced down and underneath the Caribbean Plate. Way down: the Puerto Rico Trench is over 28,000 feet deep. It's the deepest spot in the Atlantic and is second in depth only to the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific.

Puerto Rico Trench originally from en.wikipedia.org. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

If you look at the wonderfully colored chart above, you'll see the purple that marks the depths of the Puerto Rico Trench. Just below the island of Puerto Rico itself, you'll see the "Virgin Islands" marked, but the name marks the relative locations of St. John, St. Thomas, and the British Virgin Islands and not St. Croix.

To find St. Croix, you must look just to the left of the "Virgin Islands" designation where you'll see a narrow blue pit with a smidgen of green to the left of it: that unlabeled green smidgen is St. Croix, and the pit between St. Croix and the rest of the Virgin Islands is called the Virgin Islands Basin. While not as deep as the Puerto Rico Trench, it still descends to almost 15,000 feet in places, which is plenty deep in my book.

But those are just generalized descriptions: what brings home the reality of the depth of the Virgin Island Basin is something that also makes St. Croix a scuba-diving wonderland.

If you go to Cane Bay on St. Croix's north shore and paddle out into the Caribbean about 100 yards or so from shore, you'll paddle along in water that goes down maybe 60 ft or so. But if you continue to paddle out, suddenly you'll be over the edge of the Virgin Islands Basin and looking down a sheer cliff that drops straight down as much a mile in some spots. This cliff is known as The Wall, and it's one of the most famous scuba-diving spots in the world.

Jane and Jake were brave enough to venture out to see it with snorkels and came back babbling about sea turtles and such. As wonderful at sea turtles might be, I was happy to stay on terra a little bit more firma.

Salt River Bay National Historical Park

Salt River Bay is the only place that any of Christopher Columbus's crew members actually set foot on what would become U.S. soil. It's a beautiful inlet/bay but the beauty was for me overshadowed by the havoc that the Europeans wrought on the native population. Not that the indigenous peoples were any less wracked by wars and jealousies and so on than anyone else, but the technological advantages of the Europeans combined with their presumption that God was on their side makes it much harder for me to overlook their sins.

Jane took a daytime kayaking tour here with a local guide and enjoyed it very much. I don't think we knew at the time that Salt River Bay is also home to a bazillion bioluminescent organisms that you can paddle among at night. I clearly remember being astonished by photos in the National Geographic when I was but a pup.

Estate Whim Plantation Museum

I mentioned Estate Whim earlier but because of the library/archive. There is also a museum that includes the Whim Great House and remnants of the sugar plantation operation here.


Whim Plantation, St. Croix, USVI, by Katka Nemkova. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Cruzan Rum Tour

If all you know of rum is Bacardi's, poor you! Rum, also known as "kill-devil," can be far more interesting than anything you've poured yourself out of a Bacardi bottle.

Rum of course is made from fermented and distilled molasses and has a wonderful history. Since there was an abundance of sugar cane on the Caribbean islands, there was also an abundance of rum being made. And drunk. On our tour of the Cruzan Rum distillery, we saw giant vats of the molasses brew that appeared to be boiling but in reality were only fermenting—but they were fermenting fast enough that they bubbled madly.

And at the end of the tour, you can sample the various blends and flavors, and there are many. And you'll not think of rum the same way again. Maybe somebody else should drive.

A Final Souvenir: A Hook Bracelet

Jane apparently knew all about these things before we went—but then, I would be among the last to think of something like this. They are apparently unique to the Virgin Islands and were started in St. Croix. Folklore has it that the Crucian women wore these as symbols of their never-ending love for their husbands, and when their men set out to sea, they would turn the hook so it pointed down. When their men returned, they would turn the hook back up again.

Jane wears hers every day, even though I only go to the library. It's a nice thought though.

Jane's Crucian hook bracelet

Come Home To St. Croix

A final note: I don't know how long they've been doing it, but the St. Croix Landmarks Society sponsors an annual "Come Home to St. Croix" Festival to welcome anyone with Cruzan roots to come home and learn more about Cruzan history and culture and possibly one's own family history. This year's festival takes place July 12-19, mostly at the Estate Whim Museum.