Seven Flags Over St. Croix: A Short History of Everyone

St. Croix has flown the flags of seven nations — Spain, the Netherlands, England, France, the Knights of Malta, Denmark, and the United States. That's not a trivia answer; it's the island's whole shape. Here is the short version of a very long story.

Claimed, contested, sold

After the Kalinago and Taíno centuries — and Columbus's violent 1493 touch-and-go at Salt River — the 1600s turned the island into a European scramble: Dutch and English settlements, Spanish raids, a French takeover, and in 1651 a stretch under the Knights of Malta, the crusader order turned colonial landlord (their cross still turns up in island iconography). France resumed control before selling the island to the Danish West India & Guinea Company in 1733.

The Danish two centuries

Denmark built what you now see: Christiansted (named for King Christian VI) and Frederiksted (for Frederik V), the two forts, the arcaded streets, and a brutal sugar economy worked by enslaved Africans on more than a hundred plantations — the era that ended with the 1848 emancipation and lingered through the labor revolts of the late 1800s. The plantation world is preserved, honestly told, at Estate Whim.

Flag seven

In 1917, mid–World War I, the United States bought the Danish West Indies for $25 million in gold, largely to keep the harbors out of German reach. St. Croix became American soil; its people became U.S. citizens in 1927. The island kept its French name — Sainte-Croix, Holy Cross — its Danish street grid, and its Crucian identity, which absorbed all seven chapters and answers to none of them.

Where to touch each layer

Salt River for 1493; Fort Christiansvaern for Danish power; Fort Frederik for its end; Whim for the economy underneath; the street names — King, Queen, Company, Strand — for the everyday Denmark that never left. It's a lot of history for 84 square miles, which is exactly why the island rewards guests who look up from the beach occasionally.