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Colored by history; Laid-back St. Croix filled with vestiges of centuries past.

Article Excerpt
Byline: Victor Block, SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Staring into the turquoise Caribbean Sea while sipping a tropical drink topped by a tiny paper umbrella, I suddenly realized what makes St. Croix so special.

My first inkling was the sign outside Off the Wall Beach Bar: "No shirt, no shoes, no problem." Then came the comment by island resident Hope Gibson, seated at the adjacent bar stool: "If you need to be entertained, you're ... out of luck on St. Croix."

"That's it," I said to myself. As one local Cruzan with whom I chatted conceded, "St Croix isn't a love-at-first-sight place."

Instead, the largest of the U.S. Virgin Islands offers a comfortable, laid-back middle ground between the frenzy of shopping, commercialism and noisy night life on St. Thomas and the tomb-quiet setting of St. John. St. Croix (rhymes with "boy") combines just enough attributes of those nearby islands to satisfy most travelers, then adds its own unique flavor.

That includes the roast-pig-on-a-spit party held each Saturday along Mahogany Road. Then there are the red-roofed pastel buildings in the picture-book harbor town of Christiansted, one of the prettiest in the Caribbean.

Colorful names - the likes of Body Slob, Little Profit and Rust Up Twist - remain from times when the island was divided into sugar-cane estates owned by planters from Denmark and neighboring Caribbean islands.

Also adding color to the canvas are the seven flags that have flown over St. Croix. Columbus landed there during his second voyage to the New World for the Spanish queen, in 1493. Settlers from the Netherlands, England and France followed. The island also was granted for a time to the Knights of Malta, a religious order that traced its roots to Jerusalem in the 11th century.

Denmark took possession in 1733, after also acquiring St. Thomas and St. John, and held the island for nearly 200 years. Despite the Danes' inexperience in colonizing and the island's distance from their homeland, St. Croix flourished under Denmark with a plantation economy based on sugar cane, cotton, tobacco, molasses and rum. The United States, concerned about the security of the Panama Canal, purchased St. Croix and its sister...

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