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Excerpted from St. John Off The Beaten Track
The April 1996 Tenth Anniversary Collectors Edition of Caribbean Travel & Life magazine chose St. John's Reef Bay Trail as one of the Caribbean's ten best hikes. The Reef Bay Trail begins at Centerline Road 4.9 miles east of Cruz Bay. Parking for four or five vehicles is available opposite the trail entrance. The trail runs between Centerline Road and the ruins of the Reef Bay Sugar Factory near the beach at Genti Bay. The well-maintained 2.4-mile trail descends 937 feet from the road to the floor of the Reef Bay Valley. The average hiking time is two hours downhill from Centerline Road to the beach.
Planning the Hike From the beach near the mill, you will be met by a boat, which will take you back to Cruz Bay, allowing you to avoid the more strenuous walk back up the trail. This popular activity is offered for a modest fee and is available by reservation only. Call the St. John National Park Service at (340) 776-6201 ext. 238. Those making their own arrangements for this hike need to consider their transportation to the trailhead on Centerline Road and the method of return from the bottom of the trail. The simplest procedure is to leave your vehicle in the parking area across from the trailhead on Centerline Road, walk down the trail, and then walk back up the way you came. No formal arrangements have to be made; you can go whenever you want, with whomever you want. However, the long, steep, uphill walk back is far more difficult than the descent. This should not be a problem for those in good physical condition who may even enjoy the challenge. Make sure to pace yourself and bring plenty of water. It may also be a good idea to plan a picnic either at the petroglyphs or at the beach near the sugar factory. A cooling swim at Genti or Little Reef Bay is another pleasant way to prepare for the walk up the valley. It is also possible to exit the Reef Bay Valley without having to go back up the way you came. One good way to do this would be to make a loop using the L’Esperance Road as a route back to Centerline Road. A second option would be to take the Lameshur Bay Trail to Lameshur Bay and either arrange for transportation back to Reef Bay, or walk to Salt Pond Bay and take the bus back . The Reef Bay to Lameshur route involves backtracking about a mile from the Reef Bay Sugar Factory to reach the trail, then walking 1.5 miles with a rapid 467-foot altitude gain, and subsequent descent in order to reach the road at Lameshur Bay. This is no easier than returning uphill on the Reef Bay Trail, and it is only recommended for those in good physical condition. It will be necessary to pace yourself and to bring plenty of water. Another alternative is to walk along the Reef Bay coast to the western end of the bay where there is access to a road in Estate Fish Bay. Transportation should be arranged on both sides of this hike, as it is a long way back to the trailhead, and hitchhiking is difficult on the infrequently traveled roads of Fish Bay.
Geography
of the Reef Bay Valley History of the Reef Bay Valley When Columbus sailed past St. John in 1493, he reported the island to be uninhabited. The Tainos that lived on St. John may have already fled the island in the wake of Carib raids or they may have gone into hiding at the approach of Columbus' fleet, later to fall victim to the depredations visited upon them by the Spanish colonizers. In the early sixteenth century, St. John was reported to be re-inhabited by Amerindians fleeing Spanish persecution in St. Croix and Puerto Rico. By 1550, the island appeared to have been totally uninhabited, and it remained that way for about 100 years. Between 1671 and 1717, St. John was intermittently occupied by small groups of woodcutters, sailors, fisherman and farmers. St. John was officially colonized and settled by the Danes in 1718. By 1726, all of the land in the Reef Bay Valley had been parceled out to form 12 plantations. At first, these estates were devoted to a variety of agricultural endeavors such as cotton, cocoa, coffee, ground provisions (yams, yucca, sweet potato taro, corn, etc.) and the raising of stock animals as well as to the production of sugarcane. By the later part of the eighteenth century, the 12 plantations were consolidated into five, and sugar became the dominant crop in the valley. Only Little Reef Bay never switched to sugar growing some cotton but primarily concentrating on ground provisions and animals that were sold to the neighboring plantations. Although much of the land was cleared for agricultural purposes, a large portion of the valley was left in its natural state. The least disturbed areas of the valley are the western side of the Reef Bay Gut and the mountain spur between White Point and Bordeaux Peak. By the end of the eighteenth century, when sugar production was at its peak, and the population of the valley was at its greatest (300), about half of Reef Bay Valley was classified as woodland. In the nineteenth century, agriculture in the Reef Bay Valley began to decline. By 1915, only Par Force and Little Reef Bay in the lower valley were still active, but with only ten acres planted in sugar. Otherwise the plantations were devoted to cattle and other livestock, coconuts, fruit trees, and ground provisions. Today, most of the Reef Bay Valley, with the exception of some parcels of private property called “inholdings” is the property of the National Park.
From Centerline Road to Josie Gut Looking toward Centerline Road from the bottom of the stairs, you can see an old stone wall. This was once the retaining wall for the circular horsemill on the plantation known as Old Works and is all that remains of the old estate, which was demolished during the construction of Centerline Road. The Reef Bay Trail roughly follows the course of the Reef Bay Gut. The top section of the trail descends steeply through the moist sub-tropical forest of Reef Bay's upper valley shaded by several varieties of large trees including West Indian locust, sandbox, kapok, mammee apple and mango. National Park Service information signs provide valuable information about the natural environment of the valley.
West Indian Locust
Kapok
Tree Because of its great size, its tendency to grow straight, and because the wood is soft and more easily worked using primitive stone tools, the kapok was chosen to make the great canoes used by the Taino to travel from island to island. The kapok is often associated with the supernatural. In Africa it was said that sleeping on pillows made of kapok cotton will bring good luck, purify and empower your material and spiritual energy and bring good dreams and saintly vibrations. Slaves brought to the Caribbean often slept on mattresses and pillows stuffed with the fluffy silk cotton fiber from the kapok seedpods. Interestingly enough, this custom was often shunned by white planters and plantation overseers who believed that sleeping on kapok pillows brought about nightmares.
Sandbox
Tree Another name for this tree is monkey pistol. The sandbox produces beautiful seed pods that look like wooden tangerines. When the seeds are ripe, the individual segments, which are the separate seeds, burst apart making a sharp cracking sound like a pistol being fired. The origin of the name sandbox tree comes from the use of the seedpods as a desk accessory during the Victorian era. The ripe pods were collected just before they burst apart and were reinforced with glue to keep them together. People would then place sand in them, which was used to blot ink with.
Josie
Gut The circular horsemill, supported by an old stone retaining wall, is still in good condition. A small storage room was built into the lower portion of the retaining wall. The remains of the boiling room lie right below the horsemill, just a few yards off the trail.
Construction Materials During the plantation days, the traditional trade route to the West Indies was called the triangle trade. The first leg of the triangle trade was from Europe to Africa. The ships carried rum, weapons, and manufactured goods that were offloaded in Africa and traded for slaves. The second leg of the trade was from Africa to the West Indies in which the holds of the ships were crowded with a human cargo, slave labor for the plantations in the New World. Sailing vessels need weight, called ballast, toward the lowest sections of the ship to balance the force of the wind on the sails. This is accomplished today by the use of heavy keels or lead weights loaded near the bottom of the hull area. The simple fact that dead or dying human beings could not be sold motivated the slavers to make certain efforts to keep their property in a sellable condition. In order to further this goal, the Africans captives were moved on deck from time to time to get fresh air and to enable the crew to wash down the accumulated filth below. In short, the human cargo was not suitable as ballast, and some other weighty material needed to be in place in the lowest sections of the hull. Preferably, the ballast would be easily removable when the ship reached the West Indies in order to make room for the hogsheads of sugar, barrels of rum, bales of cotton, and other tropical products that would fetch a handsome price in Europe. European bricks were often chosen to serve as this ballast material. Not only were they compact and heavy, but they also had value in the West Indies where they could be sold as construction material.
Brain coral was another important construction material. It was used primarily on arches and as corner stones. Brain coral served this purpose well because when it is first brought from the sea, it is soft and can be cut easily with a saw to the size and shape needed. After the brain coral was shaped it would be placed in the sun to dry where it would become hard and rock-like.
Stone, already plentiful on the surface of the ground, was also uncovered during excavations for terraces, buildings and roads. Mortar was made from a mixture of lime, seashells, water and molasses. The lime was fabricated locally by burning chunks of coral and seashells. Quicklime - An Essential Material of the Colonial Period (David Knight © 2006The framework and roofs of the buildings were made of wood. Many of the larger beams were made of the extremely hard and durable Lignum vitae, a tree that was once plentiful on St. John.
From Josie Gut to the Sea
Petroglyphs Trail intersection Lameshur Bay Trail intersection The Reef Bay Trail continues Lime Trees In her book, Some True Tales and Legends About Caneel Bay, Trunk Bay and a Hundred and One Other Places on St. John, Charlotte Dean Stark remembers collecting fruit in Reef Bay: 'There are cultivated orange trees there (at Estate Reef Bay), and once, to our joy, in 1948 or 1949, there was enough rain to produce a crop of five hundred oranges. They were exceptionally sweet and of fine flavor.” Land Crabs William Henry Marsh William Marsh was in charge of setting up the steam engine. In 1864, he bought the entire Reef Bay Estate at public auction. He married a St. Johnian and had ten children. The Marsh family acquired several other estates on St. John, and they are, to this day, important landowners on the island.
The Turn of the Twentieth Century Sugar was planted just north and east of the factory behind the marshy area. The provision grounds were planted at the northern end of the valley just before it starts to slope steeply upwards. Another provision ground was located next to the greathouse. Coconut palms and bananas were cultivated in the lower area near the beach. Fruit and citrus trees were planted throughout the lower valley,
but especially near the gut. Cattle and sheep grazed on three
sections set aside as grassland.
The
Reef Bay Sugar Factory A good way to start your tour of the factory is to begin at the horsemill. Horses, mules or oxen walked in continuous circles to power the three rollers of the cane crusher in the center of the mill. A slave (or after 1848, a “worker”) on one side of the crusher fed bundles of cane into the rollers, and a worker on the other side would receive them. He, in turn, would send the crushed stalks back through the rollers for further extraction of the cane juice. The cane juice then flowed down the trough to the boiling room. The leftover crushed cane stalks, called bagasse, were dried out and stored.
One side of the boiling room housed the boiling bench and the row of copper boiling pots where the cane juice would be boiled down into a wet raw sugar called muscavado. The fires were fed from the outside of the building. Bagasse would often be burned to provide heat for the boiling operation. The muscavado would then be dried and packed into 1,000 pound barrels called hogsheads.Sailing vessels bound for Europe would arrive in Genti Bay to pick up the shipments of sugar. To accomplish this, specially constructed boats called dories were used to bring the hogsheads to the larger vessel. The dory would be beached and then turned on its side. The heavy barrels would then be rolled inside. Then the dory would be righted, launched and rowed out to the anchored vessel. Using block and tackle on the boom of the sailboat, the sugar could then be loaded into the cargo area below decks. Steam Power
At the perimeter of the horsemill, next to one of the factory walls, is the steam powered sugarcane crusher. The steam engine, built in Glasgow, Scotland in 1861 by the W.A. McOnie Co., is located in the room alongside the rollers. This room was constructed especially to house the steam engine after it was put together and installed. The sugar operation here did not proceed smoothly. The soil on the sugar plantations became depleted of nutrients, and the sugar crops became smaller and smaller. Moreover, the introduction of sugar beets in Europe and in the United States provided great competition and lowered sugar prices. Reef Bay Estate and Estate Adrian, which also converted to steam power, were the last operating sugar mills on the island. On March 7, 1908, fifteen year old Maunie Dalmida was crushed in the gear assembly next to the rollers. E.W. Marsh, the son of W.H. Marsh, died a year later and left the property to his four children, two of whom stayed on to run the plantation. The sugar operation became even more difficult after the accident because some people believed that the mill was haunted by ghosts. In 1916, St. John was struck by a major hurricane. The factory was closed and the sugar era on St. John finally came to an end. By 1930, only five people lived in the Reef Bay Valley at Par Force. They tended two acres of provisions and grazed 44 cattle. The estate was then owned by Anna Marsh, the daughter of William Henry Marsh, who sold small amounts of milk, citrus fruits, guavas, mangos and coconuts. Reef Bay remained sparsely occupied until the early 1950s. In 1955, much of Reef Bay was sold to the Rockefeller’s Jackson Hole Preserve Inc., which transferred the land to the National Park.\
The
Grave of W.H. Marsh
Historic
Bathrooms Upon reaching the sugar factory at the end of the trail, the
former First Lady asked Noble Samuels for the location of the
bathrooms. The Park Ranger acknowledged the lack of these facilities
and pointed to the bush as a possible alternative. |
