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Cane Workers, Circa. 1890
© St. Croix Landmark Society Archives
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“King Sugar” was harvested everywhere – even at the tops of the highest mountains. It particularly thrived on fertile, well-watered soil of the flat central plain along the south coast. By 1800, St. Croix boasted over 200 sugar plantations and had become the fourth largest producer in the Caribbean. As sugar expanded, cotton declined. By 1810 its cultivation had ceased. |
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Enslaved Africans cleared the dense tropical forest, cultivated the soil and built the sugar mills, factories, greathouses, and villages that everywhere dotted the landscape. They planted, tended, harvested, and processed the export crops, as well as manned the carts and boats that transported them to the market. |
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Sugar became less profitable, but continued as the island's economic mainstay until 1966. |
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| | © 2012, St. Croix Landmarks Society. All rights reserved. |
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