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Excerpted from St. John Off The Beaten
Track ©
2006 Gerald Singer
The L’Esperance Road runs between Centerline Road and
Reef Bay. The top of the trail can be found at a point about
0.3 miles east of the Cathrineberg Road. The foundation of
an old house can be seen at the beginning of the road. Park
here if you arrived by vehicle. This is not an official Park
trail.
L’Esperance Road was passable by four-wheel drive vehicles
until the 1950s, when it started to grow over. Some of the
owners of the “inholdings” (the term used to designate
private property located within the National Park boundaries)
paid to have the road bulldozed in the 1970s, and it remained
in good condition until 1995, when Hurricane Marilyn closed
off the road with fallen trees, which became covered with catch-and-keep
and other vines and vegetation. Through the efforts of the
Trail Bandit and local hikers, the road is again passable and
now leads all the way to the Reef Bay Trail.
From the Centerline Road intersection, the L’Esperance
Road descends the western side of the Fish Bay Valley in a
moist forest environment where you will pass through stands
of genip, guavaberry, turpentine, bay
rum and mango trees.
A ten-minute downhill walk takes you to a spur trail leading
to the L’Esperance Ruins. The remains of a beautiful
stone bridge crosses the Fish Bay Gut, which is one of the
three south shore guts that has permanent water to some degree
or another. The old estate contains the ruins of the original
horse mill, a storage building, estate house and sugar factory.
The residence, or greathouse, had a gallery on the lower level.
The upper story, which was of wood frame construction also
had a gallery.
The cookhouse is nearby as is the cookbench. Beyond that is
a structure that probably housed the overseer and beyond that
is in the remains of a Dutch oven.
There are two horsemills. One is located below the greathouse
and is mostly in its original configuration. The stone retaining
wall on the lower side is still intact. The other horsemill
is located across the trail as you come in. This horsemill
was apparently abandoned when the new one was constructed.
A slave village was located below the horsemill where at one
time there were 16 slave houses. The sugar factory building
can be found below the estate house. Off to the right of the
factory is the rum still with its cistern for cooling the distilled
mash. The can house where the rum was bottled is adjacent to
the rum still and cistern.
The sugar industry in St. John was at its peak at the very
end of the nineteenth century. In 1797, seventy one people
lived on the estate, 92% of the land was improved, 156 acres
were planted in sugar cane, 25 acres in provisions and 25
acres were used as pasture land where 38 cows grazed. Only
19 acres of the L’Esperance plantation were undeveloped
and classified as woodland.
In 1830, the plantation stopped its sugar production operation
and became a cattle and provision growing farm. This was a
hardship for the slaves living on L’Esperance as they
were removed from the plantation and from their families living
on nearby estates.
By 1836, only ten acres of L’Esperance were developed
and the population had fallen to 13.
L’Esperance was purchased by the municipal council for
the residence of the local doctor for the island of St. John.
The law at that time required the plantation owners to pay
two cents per person for the services of the doctor, who was
called doctor two-penny.
Records from 1875 report L’Esperance to have been abandoned.
A royal palm tree is visible from the trail near the estate
house, which may be a remaining native species. There is
some dispute as to whether the royal palm is native to St.
John or whether it was brought in. One theory is that the
royal palm, which has an edible heart of palm, was harvested
by Tainos living on St. John. Because the tree is killed
in this process, the species may have been almost completely
wiped out over the centuries.
Leaving L’Esperance and continuing the hike, the road
follows the Fish Bay Gut and the environment gets moister and
denser in an environment of large mango, genip, guavaberry
and kapok trees. The road crosses the Fish Bay Gut and for
those taking this route to Fish Bay, this is a convenient place
to access the gut. The road turns east at the gut and you will
pass through an area dominated by bromeliads, pinguins and
anthuriums. As the trail winds around to a southern exposure,
the environment becomes drier and the flora changes dramatically
from forest to scrub. There was once a cattle operation here
and you can still see the sections of an old barbed wire fence.
Wild tamarind, thorny cassia trees, catch-and-keep and maran
bush became the dominant species of plants because almost everything
else was eaten by the cattle. The land has not recovered appreciably,
although it has been more than 60 years since the last cattle
were raised here.
The first path off to the right leads to the ruins of the old
Seiban Estate started by a Johan von Seiben in 1721. The
plantation covered more than 150 acres. The extensive ruins
include the remains of the sugar factory, rum still, estate
house and various other structures. There was reported to
be two cannons here at one time, with one supposedly still
remaining somewhere in the thick bush.
In the twentieth century, the Seiban Estate was dedicated
to the raising of cattle. Its last private owner, Julius Sprauve,
Sr., who the school in Cruz Bay is named after, sold the estate
to the National Park in 1954. More recently, the Estate Seiban
area was used as a clandestine marijuana plantation with the
remains of the operation still in evidence.
an old drill press lies by the side of the
trail
The only baobob tree on St. John can be found here in Estate
Seiban.
Baobob tree on Estate Seiban
In many parts of Africa, the baobob tree is thought to be
sacred and magical. The first seeds from these trees were brought
to the Caribbean by enslaved Africans. Although there is only
one baobob on St. John, St. Croix has more baobob trees than
any other island in the Caribbean.
View from Estate Seiban
An old Danish Road, the Great Seiban, connects Seiban to Fish
Bay. The trail, recently opened by the Trail Bandit and local
hikers, descends from the Seiban Ruins near the baobob tree
and follows the contour of the Fish Bay Valley leading to
a residential area of Fish Bay. The hand-built road constructed
in colonial times has weathered the centuries well, as can
be seen by the good condition of much of the stone retaining
walls supporting the lower side of the road.
The Great Seiban
passes through shady moist forest with stands of guavaberry,
West Indian Birch, genip and turpentine trees underneath
which are bromeliads, anthuriums and love leaf. (see
map)
The main road crosses another ridge and once again begins to
descend the valley. On the south side of the road, there
is a cut for a property line marked with flags that can be
used as a path. There is a cemetery there with above ground
graves and cottages with galvanized roofs dating from when
people lived there in the early part of the century.
Soon after this you will come to an overlook with views of
Fish Bay, the Fish Bay Valley, the Ditleff Point Peninsula
and. on a clear day, the island of St. Croix.
The road winds down to a beautiful bay rum stand that is growing
alongside the gut that flows down to the eastern part of
Fish Bay. Alongside the gut is a man-made wall and a fence.
If you were to follow this gut down, you wound reach the
Fish Bay Road in the vicinity of Guavaberry Farms Nursery.
Up the gut and to the west are the remains of an old shingle-walled
house that was occupied until the 1950s. At that time, most
of the houses in Cruz Bay were of similar construction. Next
to the house are the remains of a cook house, a well, an oven
and an old boiling copper. Look for bats on the ceiling, some
of which may be nursing their young.
The L’Esperance Road continues along the eastern ridge
of the Fish Bay Valley. After passing a turnaround area for
vehicles, the road turns right crossing the mountain ridge
bringing you from the Fish Bay Valley into Reef Bay. The improved
section of road ends shortly after the right turn, but continues
as a foot path. There is an overlook with views of the Reef
Bay Valley near the top of the path.
Between the bay rum gut and the turnaround is the entrance
to the Mollendal Ruins. Some 50 yards further along the trail
you will come to another old house with a flat galvanized roof,
which is now in a collapsed condition due to the effects of
Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Estate Mollendal can be reached by a barely recognizable trail
on the west side of the road, which can be found after you
pass the gut and bay rum grove, but before the large genip
tree and the collapsed house.
The ruins include a sugar factory, rum still, horsemill and
various other structures. The boiling house had about four
coppers for boiling the cane juice. The horsemill lies above
the factory with the lower part supported by a stone retaining
wall.
The flat area immediately before the boiling bench held the
lead lined box called the receiver, which collected the cane
juice and regulated the flow of juice to the coppers by means
of a spout. The holes in the wall are vent holes used to regulate
the heat.
On the outside of the wall was the firing trench where fires
were built under the coppers to boil the cane juice.The structure
is rectangular which indicates that it predates the T-shaped
sugar factories like Annaberg, which were built between 1780
and 1820. The first factories were all rectangular. The rum
still and the storage house ruins can also be found nearby.
In 1793, the Seiben Mollendal Estate had 80 acres in cane,
60 acres in provisions and 150 acres in pasture land grazing
141 cows. About half the estate was unimproved woodlands.
The population was 141.
By 1808, the production of cane was discontinued stressing
livestock instead. A report in 1836 listed Seiben Mollendal
as having only 35 acres of pasture and a population of 18.
In 1875, this had dropped to 16 acres of pasture with only
nine inhabitants.
Between 1879 and 1913, the owners of the Seiben Mollendal
plantations transferred 49 acres to small land holders. In
1915, twenty-six people lived on 11 separate properties carved
out of the old Seiban Mollendal Plantation. The lots ranged
from two to nine acres and in total 18 acres were improved.
These subsistence farmers grew provision and fruits and raised
a small amount of livestock.
Continuing down the trail, you will notice how this old Danish
road was stabilized by a stone retaining wall on the lower
side. Along the way down there are excellent views of the
Reef Bay Valley and the shoreline. The trail continues to
lead down into the valley and as you approach the bottom,
there is a short spur that descends to the right and leads
to the beach. The main trail continues, leading to the trail
which crosses the rocky headland between Little Reef Bay
and Genti Bay. The Reef Bay Sugar Mill Ruins will be to the
east, or to your left and the beach at Little Reef Bay will
be to your right,
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