Saint Croix ( ; ; ; ; Danish and ; ) is an island in the Caribbean, and a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States.
St. Croix is the largest of the territory's islands. As of the 2020 U.S. census, its population was 41,004. The island's highest point is Mount Eagle, at . St. Croix's nickname is "Twin City", for its two towns, Frederiksted on the western end and Christiansted on the northeast part of the island.
Name The island's indigenous Taíno name is ('the river'). Its indigenous Carib name is ('the stony land'). Its modern name, Saint Croix, is derived from the French , itself a translation of the Spanish name (meaning 'island of the Holy Cross') given by Christopher Columbus in 1493. The French name was partially retained under Danish rule as , and the island was given its current spelling after the U.S. takeover in 1917. The associated demonym for the island is Crucian, derived from the original Spanish name.
History
Igneri pottery indicates human presence on the island from 1–700 CE, followed by the Taíno from 700 to 1425, before the encroachment by the Caribs in 1425; the island was uninhabited by 1590.
Various indigenous groups inhabited the island during its prehistory. Columbus landed on Santa Cruz, as he called it, on 14 November 1493, and was immediately attacked by the Kalinago, who lived at Salt River on the north shore. This is the first recorded fight between the Spanish and a New World native population, and Columbus gave the battle site the name Cabo de la Flecha (Cape of the Arrow). The Spanish never colonized the Islands, but most or all of the native population was eventually dispersed or killed. By the end of the 16th century, the islands were said to be uninhabited.
Colonial period
Dutch and English settlers landed at Saint Croix in 1625, joined by some French refugees from Saint Kitts. The English expelled the Dutch and French settlers before they themselves were evicted by a Spanish invasion from Puerto Rico in August 1650. Around 1650, a French force attacked and established a colony of 300. From 1651 until 1664, the Knights of Malta (at the time a vassal state of the Kingdom of Sicily) ruled the island in the name of Louis XIV. The island then passed to the French West India Company. The colony was evacuated to Saint-Domingue in 1695, when France battled the English and Dutch in the War of the Grand Alliance. The island was then uninhabited and abandoned for another 38 years.
In 1725, St. Thomas Governor Frederik Moth encouraged the Danish West Indies Company's directors to consider purchasing Santa Cruz (St. Croix). On 15 June 1733, France and Denmark-Norway concluded a treaty by which the Danish West India Company bought St. Croix for 750,000 livres. Louis XV ratified the treaty on 28 June 1733 and received half the payment in French coins, with the remaining half paid in 18 months. On 16 November 1733, Moth was named St. Croix's first Danish governor. The 1742 census lists 120 sugar plantations, 122 cotton plantations, 1,906 slaves, and 360 whites. By 1754, slaves numbered 7,566. That year, King Frederick took direct control of St. Croix from the company.
For nearly 200 years, St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John were the Danish West Indies. By the mid- to late 18th century, the peak of the plantation economy, St. Croix's enslaved population numbered between 18,000 and 20,000. The white population during this time ranged between 1,500 and 2,000.Loftsdóttir, Kristin, and Gísli Pálsson, "Black on White: Danish Colonialism, Iceland and the Caribbean", in Magdalena Naum and Jonas M. Nordin (eds), Scandinavian Colonialism and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena, Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology Volume, 37 (New York: Springer, 2013), pp. 37–52 (pp. 41–42). .
Future American revolutionary leader Alexander Hamilton and his brother lived in Christiansted with their mother, Rachel Faucette, on St. Croix after she returned to the island in 1765. Their residence was in the upper floor of a house at 34 Company Street, while Rachel used the lower floor as a shop selling food items. Within two years, Hamilton lost his father, James Hamilton, by abandonment, and his mother to death. Official documents from the island, a 1768 probate court testimony from his uncle, established Alexander's age at 13. By 1769, Hamilton's cousin, aunt, uncle, and grandmother had also died. Alexander's brother James became an apprentice carpenter and Alexander became the ward of Thomas Stevens, a merchant on King Street. Hamilton was soon clerking in the export-import business of Beekman and Cruger at the intersection of King and King's Cross Streets. In 1772, local businessmen funded Hamilton's further education in New York.
The slave trade was abolished in the Danish colonies in 1792, although the prohibition did not go into effect until 1802. Existing enslaved people were freed in 1848, after the 1848 St. Croix Slave Revolt, led by General "Buddhoe" Gottlieb.
The British occupied the Danish West Indies in March 1801, with the arrival of a British fleet at St. Thomas. Denmark-Norway accepted the Articles of Capitulation and the British occupied the islands without a shot being fired. The occupation lasted until April 1802, when Britain returned the islands to Denmark-Norway.
The British invaded the Danish West Indies again in December 1807. A British fleet captured St. Thomas on 22 December and St. Croix on 25 December. Denmark-Norway did not resist and the invasion again was bloodless. This occupation lasted until 20 November 1815. Both invasions were due to Denmark's alliance with France during the Napoleonic Wars. Upon the conclusion of a peace with France, the islands were returned to Denmark.
As a United States territory The 1878 St. Croix labor riot shook the island. In 1916, Denmark sold St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John to the U.S., formalizing the transfer in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies, in exchange for $25 million in gold. In a national referendum on the issue, 64.2% of Danish voters approved the sale. In an unofficial referendum held in the islands, 99.83% voted in favor of the purchase. Formal transfer of the islands to the U.S. took place on 1 April 1917.
St. Croix's inhabitants were granted U.S. citizenship in 1927. The island industrialized and moved away from an agrarian society in the 1960s. The 1972 Fountain Valley massacre, a mass shooting during a robbery at a golf club, led to a devastating reduction in tourism that lasted many years. In 1989, Hurricane Hugo struck the island with Category 4 winds. The United States Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Marshals Service were brought in to restore order.
The 2012 shutdown of the Hovensa refinery resulted in the loss of many jobs. Agriculture has seen a slow resurgence, due to an increase in demand for local produce and agricultural products. Category 5 Hurricane Maria's weaker outer eyewall crossed St. Croix in 2017; sustained winds reached over 150 mph and gusted up to 250 mph in some places on the island's western end. Maria damaged or destroyed 70% of St. Croix's buildings, including schools and the only hospital.
Geography
Saint Croix lies at . On the eastern tip of the island, Point Udall is the easternmost point (by travel, not longitude) of the United States including insular areas. The island's highest point, Mount Eagle, is high. Most of the east end is quite hilly and steep, as is the north side from Christiansted west. From the north-side hills, a fairly even plain slopes down to the south coast; this was cultivated as the island's prime sugar land.
The island has a land area of , making it the largest island of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It has rugged terrain with diverse ecosystems, including subtropical rainforests, coastal plains, shrublands, rocky hills, valleys, and beaches, and as well as coral reefs off the coast.
In 2023, St. Croix was designated a National Heritage Area—the first National Heritage Area to be located in a U.S. Territory.
Climate
St. Croix has a tropic to semi-arid climate. Trade winds blow along the length of the island year round. The temperature ranges from the mid-70s to high 80s Fahrenheit (mid-20s to low 30s Celsius), with an average temperature of 80.2 °F (26.8 °C). Average annual rainfall is around per year, but rainfall varies by season and location on the island.
The hills of the western part of the island receive a good deal more rain than the east end, with annual rainfall ranging from 50 inches per year in the northwest to 25-38 inches per year in the east. The west end has lush vegetation and palm trees, while the east end of the island is a dry desert range with a substantial amount of cactus.
August to November is the wet season in the U.S. Virgin Islands, with the remainder of the year as the dry season. About 40% of the annual rainfall usually occurs from September to November. During the dry season, fairly severe and extended drought can be a problem for the island, particularly considering the scarcity of freshwater in the U.S. Virgin Islands. St. Croix has a desalination plant, but most residential homes and businesses have built-in cisterns used to collect rainwater.
Demographics Inhabitants are called Crucians (frequently written as "Cruzans").
Due to St. Croix's history of immigration, there is much debate as to what constitutes a native Crucian. The consensus in Crucian society is anyone bahn ya ("born here" in Crucian dialect) on St. Croix can claim to be Crucian, but not necessarily a native Crucian. People considered native Crucians, or ancestral native Crucians, are those who can trace their ancestry to the era before Crucians were granted U.S. citizenship in 1927. Ancestral native Crucians (one-fourth to one-third of St. Croix's population) largely consist of the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island by Europeans during the 18th and 19th centuries and the descendants of paid laborers the Danes recruited from the British and Dutch West Indies after the Danish emancipation law in 1848. As on other Caribbean islands, many ancestral natives are also descended from European settlers and planters who migrated to the West Indies during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Due to a low number of European women in the colonial West Indies, many European men in colonial St. Croix had children with the majority African population, whose mixed-heritage descendants bear their European ancestors' surnames. There are also a handful of ancestral families on the island (traditionally known as bukra) of full European ancestry.
Due to historical economic and political differences, as well as the remnants of a 19th-century caste system based on skin complexion, socioeconomic class differences among ancestral native Crucians can vary widely, even within the same family. Most ancestral native Crucians today are employed by the Government of the Virgin Islands, while others are involved in the tourism industry and the legal and medical professions.
Puerto Rican migration was prevalent in the 1930s, '40s and '50s, when many Puerto Ricans relocated to St. Croix for work after the collapse of the sugar industry. The total population declined by 50% in the century preceding 1945.