If your idea of a national park vacation includes a hammock, tall palm trees, beautiful white sand beaches, tropical breezes and fruity rum drinks, you should probably just go ahead and book a trip to Virgin Islands National Park.
Guide to Virgin Islands
Virgin Islands National Park
The island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands is home to one of our more unique national parks. Dubbed “America’s Paradise”, this place is the epitome of a tropical island, offering visitors some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, along with hiking trails that wind through subtropical forests and along jagged rocky bluffs above crashing waves.
Meanwhile just off-shore, below beautiful turquoise waters, lie coral reefs and sea-life that beckon divers and snorkelers into a vast marine environment unlike that found in any other park in our system.
Exploring Virgin Islands
This park is a bit different than most others. First, you’ll need to get there. Once you’re here though, the fun times just kinda roll right on down the beach. The island of St. John is home to most of the park’s sites and the surrounding waters hold a few of her treasures as well. A wise visitor will spend a bit of time in the water, a bit of time on the water, and a bit of time on the park’s trails. A well-balanced approach will lead to a spectacular visit to this tropical park.
St John
St. John is a small island, just over 20 square miles in size, about the size of Manhattan Island in New York. Virgin Islands National Park comprises about 2/3 of the island and most of the smaller Hassel Island in St. Thomas harbor.
Together with St. Thomas and St. Croix, these islands comprise the U.S. Virgin Islands, the easternmost U.S territory and thus our easternmost national park, lying just east of Puerto Rico in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the famed Caribbean Sea.
Cruz Bay
Cruz Bay is the center of the world on St. John. Nearly every single person who steps foot on this island enters and exists through this small island town. The attitude here is Irie and there is a laid back feel to the community that welcomes you the second you step off the boat. The locals refer to their island as Love City, after all…
All services are found in Cruz Bay, and many people choose to stay in or near town, as it presents a logical home base for exploring the small island, the forested hills of which rise to the east.
Centerline Road
The inland of St. John is accessed by the Centerline Road, Hwy 10, which climbs through lush green forests and offers access to trailheads that lead to both the north and south shores. The Reef Bay Trail and the L’Esperance trail both lead from this road to sugar mill ruins on the park’s remote south shore.
The Reef Bay Trail also lends access to some very cool petroglyphs through which ancient people’s messages can today be interpreted by anyone who strolls out there to see them. Near the petroglyphs, the Lameshur Bay Trail leads to the east and Europa Bay.
North Shore Road
The other option for crossing the island is the North Shore Road, Hwy 20, which provides an especially scenic drive along some of the most stellar white-sand beaches in the tropics. Hawksnest Bay, Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay and Maho Bay lie in succession along the northern shore from west to east and each offers stunning beaches complete with the soothing sounds of rolling waves and laughing children.
Numerous ruins are available for viewing along this route and one of the rarer trails in our national parks can be found at Trunk Bay. The Underwater Trail is a 250-yard snorkeling trail that invites waterborne adventurers the opportunity to explore the underwater world of the Virgin Islands.
Coral Bay & the East Side
The North Shore Road meets the Centerline Road before descending into the Coral Bay, which is the main village on the island’s eastern side. This is a small community with a couple of bars and restaurants, along with a small deli. Roads lead from here to the north and south. Hwy 10 continues north and into the Hermitage area, providing access to the Brown Bay Trail, and the Johnny Horn Trail. The road eventually leaves the park and ends at Long Point, on the islands east end.
To the south of Coral Bay, Hwy 107 leads to a remote area of the park known as Ram Head, where a short trail leads to an exposed 200ft bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. This area is great for sunrise and provides some of the best rocky bluffs on the island. Below to the east lies Drunk Bay, and to the west Saltpond Bay, which offers great snorkeling.
Playtime
Oh man, there are way too many ways to have fun in the islands… and some of them include the park’s sights and sounds.
There are incredible snorkeling opportunities in the waters that surround the island of St. John. Would-be visitors should plan on spending some time in the water, and will want to read the snorkeling section on the activities page.
Hiking on the island will provide opportunities to get away from it all. Most of the trails are vacant of hikers, yet lead to some spectacular scenery. There are trails that lead to sugar mill ruins, deserted beaches, rocky bluffs, more ruins and even petroglyphs.
The nautical nature of the Virgin Islands lends itself to the allure of boating in the tropical turquoise waters. Numerous opportunities exist to charter a daysailing adventure or an offshore fishing adventure. Other folks may want to rent a kayak and cruise along the shoreline in search of unique scenery.
St John Topography
The park’s elevation changes are significant for the relatively small Caribbean island, with the summit of Bordeaux Mountain rising more than 390m (1,275ft) above the neighboring sea, which is less than two miles away. Such diversity in elevation provides two biologically distinct forests that house more than 740 species of plants.
Scientists divide the island forests into categories based upon the amounts of moisture they receive. Thus, they are termed “subtropical dry forest” and “subtropical moist forest”.
Dry Forests
Subtropical dry forests lie at lower elevations and receive less than 40 inches of annual precipitation, while subtropical moist forests receive in excess of 40 inches of precipitation, usually punctuated with a 2 to 4 month dry period.
Dry forest canopies do not often exceed 60 feet in height and consist of small rugged deciduous tree crowns whose small leaves are often thick and leathery. Common trees found in these areas are black manjack, gumbo limbo, fustic, Jamaican caper, lignum vitae, water mampoo, white fangipani and torch wood. Here we also find cacti, thorny legumes and various grasses. Here, cacti grow on shores, a mere stone’s toss from a seemingly endless body of water.
Moist Forests
Higher elevations find greater levels of moisture due in part to the landscape’s ability to intercept and extract moisture from passing trade wind clouds. Moist forests are commonly found near the island summits, on upper north-facing slopes and in low-lying areas that receive adequate amounts of water runoff to support such biomass.
These forests consist of a more complex array of species and support canopy heights that rise to nearly 100 feet. Many such species are evergreen, however deciduous trees abide here as well, including bayrumtree, black mampoo, cigar box cedar, gre gre, kapoktree, pumpwood, stinkingtoe, yellow mombin and a park junkie power plant, the sandbox tree, whose spike-lined bark led locals to call it the “monkey no climb tree”.
Along the island’s more marshy shores exists mangrove forests that provide vital habitat for both marine and bird life, while simultaneously building land, as their roots trap various organic debris that often solidify over time, eventually forming soil of their own.
An Island in Recovery
Nearly all of the forests on the island are secondary growth, or forests that are recovering from human or natural disturbance. Only the forests near the summit of Bordeaux Mountain and those found in a few of the larger ravines on the islands were less impacted by human intrusion and retain environments that are in later stages of natural development.
Much of the park’s forest land suffers today from the introduction of species during early during periods of colonization. While invasive plant species now form an essentially permanent part of the island’s forests, the eventual effects of animal species such as burros, goats, sheep and white-tailed deer constitute an unknown variable in the delicate natural equation and erosion caused by continued construction remains a detrimental factor as well.
Wildlife
While the park’s skies showcase more than 140 species of birds, most visitors may be surprised to lear that the only mammal native to the park is the bat, whose numbers are important pollinators of floral species and dispersal agents for various fruiting trees. In addition to bats, the park boasts an impressive number of coral species, gorgonians and sponges that combine to form a seascape that houses more than 300 species of fish and offers visitors some of the best snorkeling and diving in the world.
Most of the potable water here comes from rain catchments and cisterns. Approximately 80% of the Virgin Island’s water supply comes from such methods, while a mere 20% is obtained from ground water sources. So please conserve water while visiting.
Park Junkie Verdict
I’ll sum it up this way: I envision myself living here for a while at some point in my life…
The island of St. John is a welcome retreat from the hectic pace of life in modern day America, and there is a casual attitude about daily affairs here that differs substantially from the mainland. I really enjoy it…
The scenery is absolutely spectacular, and the waters are as welcoming as a postcard. A visit to the park is made all the more enjoyable by some time spent on the water. My first visit failed to deliver such an adventure, but a subsequent visit made up for that with a couple of outings that made the trip.
The snorkeling is world class and the park’s trails offer a nice level of seclusion, as it appears most visitors don’t really spend a lot of time on the trail. Too bad, because there are some incredible scenes to be discovered here in the Virgin Islands….
So yeah, I’ll see ya down in Love City…
Guide to Virgin Islands
Relevant Links
National Park Guides
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