Saint Croix


Saint Croix is an island in the Caribbean, and a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands, 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 Taino name is Ay Ay. Its indigenous Carib name is Cibuquiera. Its modern name, Saint Croix, is derived from the French Sainte-Croix, itself a translation of the Spanish name Isla de la Santa Cruz given by Christopher Columbus in 1493. The French name was partially retained under Danish rule as Sankt Croix, 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

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. 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 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. 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.
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 a 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 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, with an average temperature of 80.2 °F. 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 .
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 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 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 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.
The United States Navy purchase of two-thirds of the nearby Puerto Rican island of Vieques during World War II resulted in the displacement of thousands of Viequenses, many of whom relocated to St. Croix because of its similar size and geography. The local holiday of Puerto Rico/U.S. Virgin Islands Friendship Day has been celebrated since the 1960s on the second Monday of October, the same date as Columbus Day. St. Croix's Puerto Ricans, most of whom have lived on the island for more than a generation, have kept their culture alive while integrating it into native Crucian culture and society. For example, in informal situations, many Puerto Ricans in St. Croix speak a Spanglish-like combination of Puerto Rican Spanish and Crucian Creole English.
Migration from "down-island" occurred mainly in the 1960s and 70s. In that period, agriculture declined as St. Croix's major industry, replaced by tourism, alumina production, and oil refining. Jobs were plentiful in these industries and down-islanders came to St. Croix by the thousands. The demand for imported labor in St. Croix was exacerbated by the fact that many ancestral native Crucians, having acquired U.S. citizenship decades earlier, migrated to the mainland U.S. to pursue educational and career opportunities. Many down-islanders made St. Croix their permanent home, while others relocated to the mainland U.S. or returned to their native countries. Most down-islanders came from St. Kitts and Nevis, Antigua, St. Lucia, and Dominica, but people from every Anglophone Caribbean nation can be found on St. Croix. Down-islanders and their St. Croix-born offspring form most of St. Croix's middle class, which has dwindled in size since the 2008 global recession.
Down-island migration to St. Croix is most commonly thought of as a mid-20th century phenomenon brought upon by American immigration policy, but people of both European and African descent from the nearby islands of Anguilla, St. Martin, Sint Eustatius, Saba, St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua, and Montserrat have been migrating to St. Croix since the 1600s. Many ancestral native Crucians also share family ties with Barbados, as Bajans were heavily recruited to St. Croix to work on sugar plantations in the late 19th century.
Continental Americans, although small in number in comparison with Caribbean immigrants, have also been part of the St. Croix community. Most reside on the island's east end, and they tend to work in tourism, real estate, and legal professions. Many are temporary residents or retirees.
Arab Palestinians have been an influential part of the local economy since the 1960s, when they first started to migrate to St. Croix to set up shops, supermarkets, and gas stations.
In the 21st century, waves of migration to St. Croix have included people from the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, the Philippines, and various South American nations. St. Croix's history of migration has sometimes caused tensions between immigrants and Crucians whose ancestry on the island dates back for generations. Tensions have subsided to some extent in recent years, mainly due to intermarriage among Crucians and other Caribbean peoples. In the late 1990s, many people supported legislation to define as a "native U.S. Virgin Islander" anyone who could trace their ancestry on the island to 1927, the year in which U.S. Virgin Islanders were granted U.S. citizenship. This effort by a select group of nationalist senators failed after much public outcry and controversy. It was learned that most native-born U.S. Virgin Islanders would not qualify as "native" under the proposed legislation, as their immigrant ancestors had arrived later than 1927, but thousands of Danish citizens would have qualified.
In 2009, the proposed U.S. Virgin Islands Constitution proposed by the Fifth Constitutional Convention established three definitions of U.S. Virgin Islanders: "Ancestral Native Virgin Islander"—those with ancestral ties ; "Native Virgin Islander"—those born on the island ; and "Virgin Islander"—any U.S. citizen who has resided in the territory for five years. The United States Congress rejected the proposed constitution in 2010 for violating the principle of equal rights for all citizens of the territory, "native" or not, and sent it back to the convention for further consideration.
At the 2020 U.S. census, St. Croix's population was 41,004, and its population living in households was 39,442. Of its population living in households, 51.6% were born in the U.S. Virgin Islands; 15.6% were born in the United States; 3.9% were born in U.S. Island Area or Puerto Rico; and 29.0% were born elsewhere. Of those born elsewhere, 91.4% were born in the Caribbean; 3.0% were born in Asia; 2.5% were born in Europe; 1.9% were born in Central America or South America; and 1.2% were born elsewhere.
Place of birthNumberPercentage
U.S. Virgin Islands20,36651.6%
United States6,09815.5%
Caribbean10,44326.5%
U.S. Island Area or Puerto Rico1,5553.9%
Asia3420.9%
Europe2820.7%
Central America and South America2220.6%
Elsewhere1350.3%