If you only have enough time to hike one trail, then the Cinnamon Bay Loop Trail is the trail for you. Also, because the trail is relatively short, flat and shady, it’s a perfect choice for those who would like to experience a taste of the St. John interior, but who might be put off by the prospect of a long hike on the often hilly and rugged terrain characteristic of the St. John forest. As an added bonus, the Virgin Islands National Park has placed a series of wonderfully informative signs along the trail covering everything from history and culture to nature and environmental concerns.

The trail begins on the North Shore Road (Route 20) about ten yards east of the Cinnamon Bay Campground entrance on the opposite side of road.

National Park Service sign at head of trail

The Ruins
The twelve columns that at one time supported the factory storage room are plainly visible from the road, and this is an ideal place to begin the loop. This stone structure was used for the storage of crude brown sugar called muscavado, molasses, barrels of rum, and crushed and dried sugarcane stalks called bagasse, which were used for fuel and fertilizer.

South of the storage room are the remains of the horsemill and the boiling house.

The Sugar Mill, Photo by Dean Hulse

The sugarcane crushing apparatus was in the center of the horsemill and from there the cane juice flowed down the trough and into the boiling room.

Remains of Horsemill

Horsemill Sketch by Natasha Singer

On the west side of the boiling room were the boiling trays where the cane juice was boiled down and transferred from copper pot to copper pot as it gradually thickened into sugar. The fires were stoked from the outside of the building. The large chimney still remains.

On the southwest corner of the sugar factory is the well-preserved bay rum distillery.

Bay Rum Still

Bay Rum
The Danish West India Plantation Company acquired Cinnamon Bay at the turn of the twentieth century. In 1903 they began growing fruit and bay rum trees for the production of the bay leaf oil, used in the popular cologne and lotion known as St. John Bay Rum.

Fruit cultivation did not turn out to be economically rewarding because of the difficulty in transporting the fruit to the European market. The fruits would often spoil before they could be sold.

Bay rum oil, on the other hand, showed some promise. It did not deteriorate rapidly and had the potential to be a profitable commodity. The success of this venture at Cinnamon Bay motivated other landowners on St. John to begin bay rum production.

Harvesting bay rum leaves was a labor-intensive process. Workers, who were often young children, had to climb the trees and carefully strip off the leaves. All the leaves could not be picked off the tree at one time, and neither could the leaves be picked more than twice a year to avoid damage to the tree. The leaves were put into large sacks and brought to the distillery. The harvester would only be paid eight cents for a 65-pound bag of leaves.

The Forest Trail
From the bay rum distillery the trail leads into the tropical forest and a magnificent stand of bay rum trees.

Bay Rum and Anthurium

The Danish Cemetery
A short spur trail to the left leads to an old Danish cemetery. Anna Margarethe Berner Hjardemaal, the wife of a former owner of the estate, is buried here in an above ground tomb. Her husband, Nicolai Severin Hjardemaal, a Dane, became the owner of Cinnamon Bay in 1834. The plantation was then called the America Hill Plantation. Hjardemaal's wife was born in St. Croix on November 7, 1785 and died at the age of fifty-one on November 27, 1836, just two years after she and her husband acquired the estate.

Danish Cemetary

.Slaves on the plantation were not afforded such an elaborate interment. They were buried at the beach at Cinnamon Bay. The erosion of the shoreline and heavy ground seas has caused the remains of some the deceased to wash out into the bay. Divers have reported finding skulls and other bones under rocks and coral around the western portion of the beach and at the next beach to the west, Little Cinnamon Bay.

Trees
After about a quarter mile, the trail crosses the gut. In this area you may notice several extremely large dead trees, some still standing and others which have already fallen.

These trees were mammee apple (Mammea Americana) trees. Until the early 1980s these magnificent trees lined the Cinnamon Bay portion of the North Shore road and grew in abundance in the forest near the gut. According to my friend, the late John Gibney, the die off may have been caused by a depletion of the underground water table in the 1980s when an unusual amount of water was taken from the wells.

Portion of Cinnamon Bay Water Works

There are, however, several large surviving mammee apple trees on the Cinnamon Bay Loop Trail. The mammee apple is native to tropical areas of the Americas. In the summer it bears a brown grapefruit sized fruit that was described by the Spanish chronicler Ovied in the 1500s as “firmer and much better in taste than peaches.”

Mammee Apple (Mammea Americana)

In this area of the trail you can see the remains of the stone terraces that, in days gone by, were laboriously constructed by slave labor and planted with row after row of sugarcane.

A short distance after crossing the gut, the trail leads back in the opposite direction. The gut will now be on your right. Here is a small stand of cocoa trees, (Theobroma cacao) which grow a seedpod from which chocolate is derived.

Cocoa (Theobroma cacao)

Continuing along the trail, you will pass several large mango trees, which are hundreds of years old. These and other fruit trees were usually left standing when fields were cleared first for sugarcane production and later for cattle grazing and charcoal manufacture, and thus are some of the largest trees found on the island.

On this side of the gut are many guavaberry trees, which can be identified by their smooth shiny bark that looks much like the bay rum tree, but with smaller leaves.

The trail leads back to the estate house area of the plantation, and here you will find an excellent specimen of the distinctive calabash tree. The fruit of this tree, although not edible, is used to make bowls, purses and other handy items.

Estate house
The estate house is directly west of the sugar factory. In the early 1900s it was demolished by a hurricane. The house was rebuilt with the walls and roof made out of galvanized steel. The caretaker of the property lived here until the summer of 1969.

A cookhouse and oven are located west of the estate house. The oven was heated by burning coals or wood until the bricks became extremely hot. Then the ashes and remaining coals were swept out and the food was put in to bake.

Stone Oven

Mongoose
According to St. John on Foot and by Car, by Randall S. Koladis, first written in 1974, the caretaker was known by natives “as a crafty old man who never lost a chicken to a greedy mongoose”. He accomplished this by feeding his chickens a diet of coconut in the shell. He would break open the nut, but he never removed the coconut meat for them. The labor of separating the coconut meat from the shell gave the chickens a lot of exercise, and it kept them in good enough shape to outrun and out-maneuver the mongoose.

If you're interested in the environment of St. John, Virgin Islands, check out The Nature of the Islands, by Virginia Barlow.

It's the best way to learn about and by able to identify the flora, fauna and diverse environments of St. John and the Caribbean islands on land and under the sea.

top of page