The United States Virgin Islands, officially the Virgin Islands of the United States, are a group of Caribbean islands and a territory of the United States. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The islands have a tropical climate.
Politics of the United States Virgin Islands takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic dependency, whereby the governor is the head of the territory's government, and of a multi-party system. United States Virgin Islands are an unincorporated and organized territory of the United States, administered by the Office of Insular Affairs of the United States Department of the Interior. Executive power is exercised by the local government of the Virgin Islands. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The Virgin Islands are an archipelago between the North Atlantic Ocean and northeastern Caribbean Sea, geographically forming part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean islands or West Indies.
The Danish West Indies or Danish Virgin Islands or Danish Antilles were a Danish colony in the Caribbean, consisting of the islands of Saint Thomas with 83 square kilometres (32 sq mi); Saint John with 49 square kilometres (19 sq mi); and Saint Croix with 220 square kilometres (85 sq mi). The islands have belonged to the United States as the Virgin Islands since they were purchased in 1917. Water Island was part of the Danish West Indies until 1905, when the Danish state sold it to the East Asiatic Company, a private shipping company.
Charlotte Amalie, located on St. Thomas, is the capital and the largest town of the United States Virgin Islands. It is the anchor of the subdistrict of Charlotte Amalie that is composed of the town of Charlotte Amalie, the census-designated place (CDP) of Charlotte Amalie West, and the CDP of Charlotte Amalie East. It was founded in 1666 as Taphus. In 1691, the town was renamed to Charlotte Amalie after the Danish queen Charlotte Amalie of Hesse-Kassel (1650–1714). It has a deep-water harbor that was once a haven for pirates and is now one of the busiest ports of call for cruise ships in the Caribbean, with about 1.5 million-plus cruise ship passengers landing there annually. Protected by Hassel Island, the harbor has docking and fueling facilities, machine shops, and shipyards and was a U.S. submarine base until 1966. The town has been inhabited for centuries. When Christopher Columbus arrived in 1493, the area was inhabited by Caribs, Arawaks, Ciboney and Taíno native peoples. It is on the southern shore at the head of Saint Thomas Harbor. In 2020 the subdistrict of Charlotte Amalie had a population of 14,477 which makes it the most densely populated area in the Virgin Islands Archipelago with the town of Charlotte Amalie as the anchor of "the City". Hundreds of ferries and yachts pass by the town each week.
The Lesser Antilles is a group of islands in the Caribbean Sea, forming part of the West Indies in Caribbean region of the Americas. They are distinguished from the larger islands of the Greater Antilles to the west. They form an arc which begins east of Puerto Rico at the archipelago of the Virgin Islands, swings southeast through the Leeward and Windward Islands towards South America, and turns westward through the Leeward Antilles along the Venezuelan coast.
Saint Croix is an island in the Caribbean Sea, and a county and constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States.
Saint Thomas is one of the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea, and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. Along with surrounding minor islands, it is one of three county equivalents in the USVI. Together with Saint John, it forms one of the districts of the USVI. The territorial capital and port of Charlotte Amalie is located on the island.
Christiansted is the largest town on Saint Croix, one of the main islands composing the United States Virgin Islands, a territory of the United States of America. The town is named after King Christian VI of Denmark.
The United States Virgin Islands, often abbreviated USVI, are a group of islands and cays located in the Lesser Antilles of the Eastern Caribbean, consisting of three main islands and fifty smaller islets and cays. Like many of their Caribbean neighbors, the history of the islands is characterized by native Amerindian settlement, European colonization, and the Atlantic slave trade.
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island countries and 19 dependencies in three archipelagos: the Greater Antilles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Lucayan Archipelago.
The Spanish Virgin Islands, formerly called the Passage Islands, commonly known as the Puerto Rican Virgin Islands, consist of the islands of Vieques and Culebra, located between the main island of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands in the northeastern Caribbean. Located between the Greater and Lesser Antilles, the islands are administratively part of the archipelago of Puerto Rico, and geographically part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands of the Leeward Islands in the Lesser Antilles.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Collectivity of Saint Martin:
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the territory of the United States Virgin Islands.
The Caribbean, is a subregion in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the North Atlantic Ocean. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America to the west, and South America to the south, it comprises numerous islands, cays, islets, reefs, and banks. It includes the Lucayan Archipelago, Greater Antilles, and Lesser Antilles of the West Indies; the Quintana Roo islands and Belizean islands of the Yucatán Peninsula; and the Bay Islands, Miskito Cays, Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia, and Santa Catalina, and Corn Islands of Central America. It also includes the coastal areas on the continental mainland of the Americas bordering the region from the Yucatán Peninsula in North America through Central America to the Guianas in South America.
Sugar production in the Danish West Indies, now the United States Virgin Islands, was an important part of the economy of the islands for over two hundred years. Long before the islands became part of the United States in 1917, the islands, in particular the island of Saint Croix, was exploited by the Danish from the early 18th century, and by 1800 over 30,000 acres were under cultivation, earning Saint Croix a reputation as the "Garden of the West Indies". Since the closing of the last sugar factory on Saint Croix in 1966, the industry has become only a memory.
Arnold Ray Highfield was an American professor, historian, writer, and poet, best known for his historical works on the Danish West Indies and the United States Virgin Islands.
The Indian community in the United States Virgin Islands is made up of Indo-Caribbeans, Indian Americans and other persons of Indian origin. The first Indians in the United States Virgin Islands (USVI) arrived in the Danish colony of Saint Croix in June 1863 as indentured workers. However, the nearly all 325 Indians who came to Saint Croix left the island by the 1870s. Nearly two-thirds returned to India, while the others emigrated to Trinidad and Tobago. Some settled in that country, while others returned to India from Trinidad.
The 1916 Virgin Islands hurricane was a strong tropical cyclone that inflicted extensive damage across the Virgin Islands in October 1916. It was the region's most destructive storm since at least the 1867 San Narciso hurricane; Consul General Christopher Payne and archaeologist Theodoor de Booy considered the 1916 storm as the archipelago's most damaging. Its peak intensity was equivalent to a Category 3 on the modern Saffir–Simpson scale. The storm began as a tropical depression southeast of Barbados on October 6, though little is known about the storm's origins or its developing stages; by the time its center was first located, the cyclone was already a hurricane and causing damage in the Virgin Islands. After forming, the storm moved northwest into the eastern Caribbean Sea and strengthened quickly. Rough seas were produced in the Windward Islands at Dominica and Saint Kitts as the storm passed nearby between October 7–8, damaging coastal villages.
