Annaberg Sugar Factory: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Virgin Islands National Park, National Park Service

Byrd, Beth; University of Georgia Cultural Landscapes Lab

The U.S. Virgin Islands are located between the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. Three islands--St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John, and a number of small cays lie 50 miles east of Puerto Rico. The Virgin Islands National Park occupies three-fifths of St. John Island, the smallest of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Hassel Island, off of Charlotte Amalie harbor on St. Thomas Island. While geographically and geologically associated with the Greater Antilles, the Virgin Islands are Leeward Islands, historically tied to the Lesser Antilles (Hatch 1972, 1). Sheltered bays, sandy beaches, and craggy cliffs define the perimeter of St. John while steeply sloped mountains and thick vegetation cover the inland landscape. The Annaberg Sugar Factory lies in the Maho Bay (northeast) quarter of St. John on Leinster Bay. The Annaberg Sugar Factory landscape sits on an elevated knoll 102’ above the shoreline commanding a view of Mary Creek, Leinster Bay, Little Thatch Island, Great Thatch Island, and the western edge of Tortola, part of the British Virgin Islands. The Annaberg Sugar Factory is a component of a larger estate landscape built and used during the height of Danish colonial sugar production (1779-1867). Located along the National Park Service’s North Shore Road with access via a parking lot and taxi turnaround, the site includes stabilized ruins of an historic industrial complex, the remains of an enslaved laborer’s village, and a modern provisional garden. A retaining wall encloses the north and eastern boundaries of the complex with a system of aqueducts and cisterns that divert water from the slope above. Annaberg Sugar Factory has interpretive trails that wind through the surviving industrial buildings. Beyond the retaining wall to the west, an enslaved laborer’s village remains as an archeological site and the slope continues dropping steeply to the shore. The ridgeline, Leinster Bay, and two natural ravines, known locally as guts, roughly bound the Annaberg Sugar Factory component landscape. The Isaac Constantin Plantation component landscape is directly to the east. The complex bounded by the retaining wall and uphill slope contains a stone and coral rubble windmill, a circular animal mill, the ruins of a sugar processing factory, pillars from an historic bagasse shed, a twentieth-century cookhouse, a bake oven, an ox pound, and ruins of a stable, a dungeon, and a bleach (a pile of stones used to dry clothes in the sun). East of the wall, two unidentified buildings remain covered in thick vegetation. Three cisterns and a stone aqueduct are located on the slope above the factory. Terraces once used to maximize sugar cane acreage may also remain under the extensive second-growth forest, but were not identified during the 2008 site visit. The enslaved laborer’s village is offset from the center of sugar production and exists as a series of foundation ruins. The component landscape retains integrity of location, design, workmanship, materials, and association. The loss of surrounding sugar cane fields diminishes the overall integrity of setting. The manicured lawn and asphalt paths around the buildings as well as the loss of the enslaved laborers’ village compromise the integrity of feeling. The Annaberg Sugar Factory landscape is stabilized and managed as a cultural resource by Virgin Islands National Park. Encroaching vegetation is removed on a regular basis and a provisional garden and baking exhibits interpret the history of the site.

Annaberg Sugar Factory: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Virgin Islands National Park, National Park Service

Series