Saint Croix Island, United States Virgin Islands — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Saint Croix Island known for?

Rolling hills and rainforest cover the interior of Saint Croix, and the island's size, the largest in the United States Virgin Islands, gives it more ground to work with than its neighbours in the Caribbean have. Saint Croix counts as a county. That double role, county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands, sits on an island of roughly 215 square kilometres.

Rainforest and rolling hills share the interior, and that combination gives Saint Croix a green centre set back from the Caribbean water on every side.

Where is Saint Croix Island?

Saint Croix is the largest of the United States Virgin Islands, and roughly 215 square kilometres of ground is enough to carry an interior distinct from its coast. Hills roll through it. Rainforest grows across parts of the island, and the mixture of wooded ground and rolling hill gives Saint Croix an interior that reads as green rather than as shore.

The Caribbean sets the boundary on every side. Nothing on the island is far from the water, since roughly 215 square kilometres of land in the Caribbean means the coast is never more than a short run from the rolling hills at the centre. Position places Saint Croix Island in the tropics, north of the equator and inside the northern hemisphere, which accounts for the rainforest.

Administratively the island stands on its own. Saint Croix is both a county and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands, a status that gives a single island the standing an entire district holds elsewhere in the United States. Size is relative here.

Against the other United States Virgin Islands, Saint Croix is the large one, and that is the fact that shapes everything from the rainforest inland to the room the island has for towns.

What is Saint Croix Island like?

Official life on Saint Croix happens in English. Saint Croix belongs to the United States Virgin Islands, an unincorporated territory of the United States, and that relationship runs through the island's institutions, its documents and the language its towns conduct business in. The Caribbean supplies the other half.

An island of roughly 215 square kilometres in that sea runs on its own scale, where the towns, the rolling hills behind them and the rainforest are all within the same short compass. County status is part of the picture. Saint Croix functions as a county and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands, so island identity and administrative identity coincide here in a way they rarely do on a mainland.

Distance from the mainland matters. Saint Croix Island sits in the Caribbean rather than off the coast of the United States, and that separation shows in how much the island runs on its own terms. Islands draw people for island reasons.

Visitors come to Saint Croix for what the Caribbean offers and stay among towns that answer to the same tropical weather, the same hills and the same sea as everything else in the United States Virgin Islands. The date 1916 anchors the present arrangement, and the island's place within the United States is counted from it.

What is the history of Saint Croix Island?

The record starts at 1916. Saint Croix carries that year as its founding date, the point from which its standing inside the United States Virgin Islands and, through them, the United States is counted. Two labels attach to the island.

Saint Croix is counted as a county and as a constituent district of the territory, and the largest island of the group carries both at once.

What is the climate of Saint Croix Island?

The Caribbean sets the terms. Saint Croix Island lies in the tropics north of the equator, and sea on every side keeps the range between warm and warmer rather than between warm and cold. Rainforest on the interior is the visible proof, and the rolling hills hold that cover through the year in the tropical band of the northern hemisphere.

How do you get to Saint Croix Island?

Every arrival is by water or air. Saint Croix is an island in the Caribbean, separated from the rest of the United States Virgin Islands by open sea, so there is no road onto it from anywhere. Size helps after landing.

Roughly 215 square kilometres of ground means the rolling hills, the rainforest and the towns are all reachable inside a single day on the largest island of the group.