Salt River Bay National Historic Park and Ecological Preserve | |
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IUCN category V (protected landscape/seascape) | |
![]() Overview of Salt River Bay and Landing Site | |
Location | St. Croix, Virgin Islands, USA |
Nearest city | Christiansted, Virgin Islands |
Coordinates | 17°46′44″N64°45′32″W / 17.77889°N 64.75889°W |
Area | 945.77 acres (382.74 ha) |
Established | February 24, 1992 |
Visitors | 2,419(in 2011) [1] |
Governing body | National Park Service & U.S. Virgin Islands Gov't |
Website | Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve |
Designated | 1980 |
Salt River Bay National Historic Park and Ecological Preserve is a unit of the National Park Service on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It preserves upland watersheds, mangrove forests, and estuarine and marine environments that support threatened and endangered species. It also contains the Columbus Landing Site, a National Historic Landmark that is the only known site where members of a Columbus expedition set foot on what is now United States territory. The site is marked by Fort Salé, a remaining earthworks fortification from the French period of occupation, about 1617. The park also preserves prehistoric and colonial-era archeological sites including the only existing example of a ball court in the US Virgin Islands.
Salt River Bay is located on the north side of the island of St. Croix, on its central coast. The bay is a large inlet with two major sections, the left fed by the Salt River. The park property encompasses substantially all of the land abutting the bay. This area's blend of sea and land holds some of the largest remaining mangrove forests in the Virgin Islands, as well as coral reefs and a submarine canyon. Salt River Bay's natural history, its vitally important ecosystem of mangroves, estuary, coral reefs, and submarine canyon, has witnessed thousands of years of human endeavor. Every major period of human habitation in the Virgin Islands is represented: several South American Indian cultures, the 1493 encounter with Columbus, Spanish extermination of the Caribs, attempts at colonization by a succession of European nations, and enslaved West Africans and their descendants. More than a dozen major archeological investigations since 1880, together with historical research, reveal a remarkable story.
On February 24, 1992 Congress created the park, under cooperative management of the National Park Service and Government of the Virgin Islands of the United States. These agencies jointly manage this park. As an historic area of the National Park Service, the park was administratively listed on the National Register of Historic Places on the same day. The Columbus landing site had already been designated a National Historic Landmark on October 9, 1960. The Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve is honored with the 53rd quarter in the America the Beautiful Quarters in 2020. [2]
The bay was the location of a Taino village and batey since the 1300s, until conquered by the Caribs in 1425. The Columbus landing site is located on a point at the western side of the bay. It is here that Columbus sent a longboat to shore on November 14, 1493, to explore the area and acquire fresh water and provisions. A nearby village was occupied by Taíno people who had recently been enslaved by invading Carib forces, and Columbus' men took some of the women and children with them when they set out to return to the ship. While en route, they encountered a canoe apparently occupied by Caribs, and a brief skirmish took place, in which one of the canoe's occupants was slain and the others captured. [3] This was the first recorded fight by the Spanish with the New World native population, and they named the site Cabo de la Flecha (Cape of the Arrow). [4] [5]
The island had been abandoned by the Caribs by 1590 (possibly due either to diseases introduced by contact, Spanish massacres, or other causes), and became Spanish territory. It was taken by the English in 1641, and then the Dutch in 1642. The Dutch built triangular earthworks called Fort Flamand (Flemish Fort) near the site, which was taken over by the French in 1650, and renamed Fort Salé (Salt Fort or du Sal Fort after the governor). It remains the only known structure to survive from this early colonial period. [3] [5] : 98
Gudmund Hatt first discovered the site in 1923. Excavations revealed petroglyphs, human sacrifice remains, zemis, and stone belts. Some of the artifacts are now in the National Museum of Denmark. [5]
Salt River is home to one of two bioluminescent bays or bio bays on the island of St. Croix (a second bio bay can be found at Altona Lagoon). [6] Every year thousands of people flock to see the glowing water of the Bio Bay that's created by a micro-organism, the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense. The bay is also home to other bioluminescent marine life including Ctenophora or comb-jellies and Odontosyllis phosphorea [7] or Fireworms.
Bio Bays are extremely rare with "only seven year-round lagoons known to exist in the Caribbean", says Dr. Michael Latz of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, an expert on bioluminescent organisms, "Any place that has a bioluminescent bay should cherish it like a natural wonder, like a treasure". [8]
A combination of factors creates the necessary conditions for bioluminescence: red mangrove trees surround the water (the organisms have been related to Mangrove forest [9] although Mangrove is not necessarily associated with this species). [10] A study at the Bio Bay located at Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve is being conducted by faculty and students from the University of South Carolina, the University of North Carolina Wilmington and the University of the Virgin Islands. Their research is focused on analyzing quality and nutrient composition of the water, the distribution of the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, and the abundance of "cysts," dormant dinoflagellates embedded in the sea floor.
The National Park Service and its partner institutions completed a study of the bioluminescence phenomenon in the Mangrove Lagoon in Spring 2014. [11]
Salt River Canyon is a prehistoric river and waterfall having cut two deep walls facing each other across a quarter mile of blue water. The feature is one of the best known of St. Croix's dive features, along with the Frederiksted Pier. The most popular scuba diving locations are a few hundred yards outside the Salt River Bay. Although most of the boat moorings are 25-45' deep, the actual canyon reaches nearly 500' in depth. Recreational scuba limits are 130' and well into the shadows of the canyon walls. This location is known for its sheer depth, clarity, and wildlife. February and March play host to nursing humpback whales. Year-round are both the nurse shark and reef shark. Occasionally one of the pods of dolphins may come swimming by as well. Sport Diver Magazine has also rated this area as one of the top 5 for water clarity in the Caribbean.
Vieques, officially Isla de Vieques, is an island and municipality of Puerto Rico, in the northeastern Caribbean, part of an island grouping sometimes known as the Spanish Virgin Islands. Vieques is part of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and retains strong influences from 400 years of Spanish presence in the island.
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.
Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge is a United States National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), and part of the Everglades Headwaters NWR complex, located just off the western coast of North Hutchinson Island in the Indian River Lagoon east of Sebastian, Florida. The refuge consists of a 3-acre (12,000 m2) island that includes an additional 2.5 acres (10,000 m2) of surrounding water and is located off the east coast of Florida of the Indian River Lagoon. Established by an executive order of President Theodore Roosevelt on March 14, 1903, Pelican Island was the first National wildlife refuge in the United States. It was created to protect egrets and other birds from extinction through plume hunting.
Salt River may refer to:
The Virgin Islands National Park is an American national park preserving about 60% of the land area of Saint John in the United States Virgin Islands, as well as more than 5,500 acres of adjacent ocean, and nearly all of Hassel Island, just off the Charlotte Amalie, Saint Thomas harbor.
The Matanzas River is a body of water in St. Johns and Flagler counties in the U.S. state of Florida. It is a narrow saltwater bar-bounded estuary sheltered from the Atlantic Ocean by Anastasia Island.
The Indian River Lagoon is a grouping of three lagoons: the Mosquito Lagoon, the Banana River, and the Indian River, on the Atlantic Coast of Florida; one of the most biodiverse estuaries in the Northern Hemisphere and is home to more than 4,300 species of plants and animals.
America's 11 Most Endangered Places or America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places is a list of places in the United States that the National Trust for Historic Preservation considers the most endangered. It aims to inspire Americans to preserve examples of architectural and cultural heritage that could be "relegated to the dustbins of history" without intervention.
The National Park System is well endowed to commemorate Hispanic contributions to American society. Some 20 national parklands represent Hispanic heritage in the United States. Some sites remotely display Hispanic contributions to American culture. The National Park System not only preserves the history and contributions of Hispanic Americans, it is also a part of the nation's history. Over the years, the National Park Service has reflected the nation's social history. Among the first Hispanics who influenced the course of the National Parks were:
Porta del Sol, or simply West Region, is a tourism region in western Puerto Rico. Porta del Sol was the first tourism region to be established by the Puerto Rico Tourism Company. It consists of 17 municipalities in the western area: Quebradillas, Isabela, San Sebastián, Moca, Aguadilla, Aguada, Rincón, Añasco, Mayagüez, Las Marías, Maricao, Hormigueros, San Germán, Sabana Grande, Guánica, Lajas and Cabo Rojo.
The Northeast Ecological Corridor Nature Reserve (NECNR) refers to an area designated as a protected Nature Reserve located on the northeast coast of Puerto Rico, between the municipalities of Luquillo and Fajardo. Specifically, the lands that comprise the NEC are located between Luquillo's town square to the west and Seven Seas Beach to the east, being delineated by PR Route # 3 to its south and the Atlantic Ocean to its north. It was decreed as a protected area by former Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal S. Acevedo-Vilá in April 2008, a decision reversed by Governor Luis G. Fortuño-Burset in October 2009, although he later passed a law in June 2012 re-designated as nature reserve two-thirds of its lands, after intense lobbying and public pressure. Later, in 2013, Governor Alejandro García-Padilla signed a law declaring all lands within the NEC a nature reserve. The area comprises 2,969.64 acres, which include such diverse habitats as forest, wetlands, beaches, coral communities, and a sporadically bioluminescent lagoon. The Corridor is also home to 866 species of flora and fauna, of which 54 are considered critical elements, meaning rare, threatened, endangered and endemic species classified by the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources (DNER), some even designated as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). These include, among others, federally endangered species such as the plain pigeon, the snowy plover, the Puerto Rican boa, the hawksbill sea turtle and the West Indian manatee. The beaches along the NEC, which are 8.74 kilometers long are important nesting grounds for the leatherback sea turtle, which starts its nesting season around April each year.
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United States Virgin Islands Mangroves are flowering trees that occupy the majority of the wetlands in the Virgin Islands. These mangroves typically grow in areas that are close to the shore and thrive in oxygen-deprived, water-logged soils and salty conditions. In the Virgin Islands, there are three types of mangroves: red, black and white mangroves.
Boquerón State Forest is one of the 20 forestry units that make up the public forest system of Puerto Rico. Despite its name, the Boquerón State Forest is not only located in Boquerón, Cabo Rojo but also spans almost 5,000 acres across the municipalities of Cabo Rojo, Lajas and Mayagüez. The forest area is also known for its limestone cliffs, the lighthouse, and the salt flats which have been a source of salt since the pre-Hispanic era and, dating to 700 C.E., they are considered to be one of the oldest industries in the Americas.
The Puerto Mosquito Bioluminescent Bay or Mosquito Bio Bay, is a bay in the island of Vieques famous for its bioluminescence produced by the dinoflagellate Pyrodinium bahamense, which glows blue when agitated. This species of phytoplankton is found in bays in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and The Bahamas.
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