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Inspiring Age-Old Tropical Fruit Garden At Annaberg Plantation
After three annual trips to St. John, I finally visited Annaberg Plantation
After hiking in the morning to Ram Head on the Caribbean Island of St. John, our friends asked what we would like to do next. We wanted to go to the beach for a swim, but we drove to the Annaberg Plantation on the North Shore first.
Annaberg was a sugarcane plantation in the 1700s when the Dutch infiltrated the West Indies, using native people and imported slaves to produce the valued product.
“The plantation tells a complex history of the violent displacement of Indigenous people, European settlement, and the enslavement of Africans.” — National Park Service.
The conditions were harsh, despite a slave revolt in 1733. During the sugarcane harvest the slaves (later called workers, after the revolt) worked 18–20 hours a day.
When you visit the plantation, you can see remnants of how they lived, worked, and survived explained through self-guided interpretive signage.
