St. John USVI Culture: A Day Trip to St. John in 1907

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In 1907, there was scheduled service to the St. Thomas, Danish West Indies by ships, which arrived once a month.

A 1907 travel guide outlined the following day trips for tourists to St. John.

Visitors to St. John would leave Charlotte Amalie at 5:00 A.M. and travel overland to Red Hook or Smith Bay. There they would meet a sloop that had left Charlotte Amalie with their baggage, which was loaded on board the night before. This sloop also carried ice and other cargo bound for St. John.

An alternative plan for a visit to St. John would be to arrange for a rowboat to take passengers and their baggage across Pillsbury Sound to Cruz Bay.

Upon arrival the tourists would wait in Cruz Bay for ponies that would take them to Bordeaux. They would return via a dirt path along the St. John's north shore that is now the North Shore Road.

At the end of the day the visitors would take the downwind trip back to Charlotte Amalie where they would arrive in the early evening.

From the Short Guide to St. Thomas and St. Jan, written by J.P. Jorgenson in 1907, a travel guide written in English, which was by then the language of the Virgin Islands.

Note: The sloop pictured above is the St. John Ferry in 1949 (photo by Fritz Henle)