Mystery Beach
Yesterday, I saw the beach just west of Annaly Bay and Annaly Cove on St Croix. It’s in the Maroon Ridge slave hideout area that almost no one seems to know anything about. I’ve never seen pictures of it. I don’t think it even has a name. Here’s a brief account.
The beach is mostly a 500-foot-long raised coral shelf with extremely sharp dog’s teeth. The eastern half looks like it has partly collapsed into the sea, so the back side juts up on an angle to about 15 feet high. It’s in many layers. Behind it are two large tidal pools, each 100 feet long and about 20- to 30-feet wide. The one to the east is very deep. I couldn’t see the bottom near the center. Water enters under a land bridge. The other is only a few feet deep and more crescent shaped. Both are almost totally still because the high coral flat protects them from the waves. I think it’s by far the most beautiful beach I’ve seen on St. Croix, but there’s something eerie about it. Two towering, rocky sea cliffs jut out at either end, and immediately behind the beach, there rises a steep mountain. It has a closed-in, isolated feel.
I hadn’t planned on seeing the area, so I had to leave my wallet and cell phone at the base of the cliff to the west in order to enter the water. I waded and swam in a dozen small pools to the west of the beach. There were fish in some. One has a hole in the bottom where water gets sucked down after a wave fills the pool. You could get pulled down on a very windy day. I heard but didn’t see another underground hole. As the waves went in and out, it sounded like someone snoring.
I didn’t go any farther west, but could see many more pools. About a quarter mile farther, I could see many fallen boulders the size of houses piled on top of one another on the shore.
Has anyone seen this beach? If you want to go there, there are a couple of tricky spots in scaling the sea cliffs from Annaly Bay. For the most part, you can stay down low near the water line where it‘s safer, but of course, watch out for the occasional big wave. It would probably be best to go with a group. I plan to go back and go farther west and maybe find the slave hideout cave after my cuts and pulled muscles heal. Haha!
Hello Former Ohioguy,
Haven't been, sounds really neat!!
I looked in a DPNR book I have about shorelines in the Virgin Islands. It list 52 named beaches on St. Croix and has a footnote that only major sand beaches are shown/named. That gravel beaches are not. Here are the ones listed:
Sandy Point
Stony Ground
Second Target
Dorst
First Target
LaGrange
Prosperity
WIlliams
Sprat Hall
Butlet Bay
Ham's Bay
Maroon Hole
Davis Bay
Northstar
Cane Bay
Rust-Op-Twist
Gentle Winds
Columbus Landing
Judith Fancy
St. Croix by the Sea
Pelican Cove
Turqouise Bay
Princesse
Protestant Cay
New Fort
Shoy's
Green Cay
Prune
Coakley
Tague Bay
Buck Island
Smugglers Cove
Knight Bay
Boiler Bay
Cramer's Park
East End Bay
Isaac Bay
Jack Bay
Grapetree Bay
Turner Hole
Rod Bay
Robin Bay
Great Pond
Fareham Bay
Spring Bay
Halfpenny
Manchenil
Canegarden Bay
Krause Lagoon
Manning Bay
Campo Rico
White Lady
Hope that helps, on second thought you likely have been to all of these already. 🙂 Enjoy!
--Islander
Islander,
Thank you. I’ve seen that list. Note that there is a gap between Maroon Hole (lighthouse) and Davis Beach (Carambola). That is the one-and-a-half-mile stretch of the Maroon Ridge beaches and cliffs. As you know, that area was never settled in the Danish era (too rough), except by runaway slaves, so it may be that there are no names for the beaches and geologic features in the area. I’m going to check with George Tyson of the Landmarks Society about this.
I have to say that I was simply stunned by that beach. It makes all the other beaches on St. Croix just look sort of average. I can’t help but wonder what else is along the coast that I call the Forbidden Zone. The owner of Tan Tan Tours told me not to go in there because it’s too dangerous. Haha! I’ll report back as I find more, or watch for my obituary in The Avis!
Hey FOG~I just might need you to go with me on that journey once I get there!
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