Frederiksted: Freedom City on the Sunset Coast

Frederiksted is St. Croix's second town and its most consequential address: the place where, in 1848, eight thousand people marched and slavery in the Danish West Indies ended by nightfall. The town wears the name Freedom City, and it earned it.

The fort that heard it

Fort Frederik, the deep-red Danish fort on the waterfront (built 1752–1760), is where Governor-General Peter von Scholten proclaimed emancipation from the ramparts on July 3, 1848, after the mass march led by the man remembered as General Buddhoe. The fort is a museum now — open weekdays and Saturday afternoons — and the story deserves more than a plaque's worth of your attention, so we gave it a full guide.

The gentler town

Where Christiansted bustles, Frederiksted breathes. Strand Street runs low Victorian storefronts along the water; the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts shows rotating exhibitions in a historic Strand Street building, free, Tuesday through Saturday; and the long pier gives the town its landmark and its world-class snorkel. On cruise-ship days the strip fills and food trucks fire up; other days you may share the waterfront with pelicans and not much else.

Eat here

Verified and worth it: Polly's at the Pier (coffee, lunch, the town's living room), Turtle's Deli (oversized sandwiches, an institution), Louie & Nacho's (tacos over the water), and the Beach Side Café at Sand Castle just south. The west end's beach bars — Rhythms at Rainbow, The Fred's pool bar — carry the afternoon into evening.

Why you come at day's end

This is the coast where the sun goes down in the water. The town faces due west; the pier points at the drop. A late-afternoon arrival — museum, sea-glass walk on Frederiksted Beach, drink at The Fred, sunset from the sand — is the west end done right, and the cross-island drive home takes about forty-five minutes.