Feb. 7, 2003 – While the V.I. National Park eventually got federal approval, the two decades leading up to its establishment in 1956 saw several changes of heart on the part of the federal government.
An early 1940s proposal to protect St. John as a park got favorable reviews but never got off the ground. The next go-round wasn't so positive.
"It can be handled more suitably by the local government" was the view of the National Park Service Region 1 director, Thomas Allen, expressed in a 1944 letter, according to Crystal Fortwangler, who read from that letter at a presentation she made Monday in Cruz Bay.
In expressing opposition to the creating of a national park in St. John, Allen emphasized his opinion that there was no area on St. John sufficiently primitive or unique to merit designation as a national park, she said.
Fortwangler, a University of Michigan graduate student doing doctoral research on St. John, spoke on "Creating the National Park: A Look at the 1930s through the 1950s." The lecture was held at the Legislature Building.
By 1945, the park proposal was dead as far as federal authorities were concerned, she said. Then, in the early 1950s, Laurence Rockefeller and his conservation organization, Jackson Hole Preserve, and Frank Stick, a wildlife illustrator, conservationist and real estate developer, began buying up St. John land.
Rockefeller started off by purchasing 600 acres at Caneel Bay, which was already a vacation resort. "At first it was all about real estate and profit," Fortwangler said.
Then Stick bought 1,475 acres at Lameshur in April 1953. "This was a serious real estate proposal," Fortwangler said, displaying a prospectus for development that included a 200-acre housing subdivision, a coffee plantation, rental cottages, businesses, a new road to Centerline Road and a dock.
In 1954, U.S. Rep. Clair Engle petitioned Congress to authorize a national park on St. John. Stick proceeded to secure options on the requisite 5,000 acres needed to establish a national park. At this point, Fortwangler said, Rockefeller directed the Jackson Hole Preserve to acquire the land.
Some people donated their land for the park, she said, although Rockefeller claims to have spent $1 million buying up property. That land was acquired from Stick's son, David; H.E. Lockhart Development Corp.; Emily Creque; Irving Backer; Frank Faulk; Julius Sprauve; Halvor Richards; Claudina Joshua; Ralf Boulon; Leonard and Sylvia Cox; Gerhart Sprauve; The Norwood Co., which was owned by Agnes and John Butler; and Julia Chandler Laurin. In November 1956, the Jackson Hole Preserve turned the acreage over to the National Park Service.
After the park was established, Alvin Schlenkerr, Antilles Enterprises and two men by the last names of Fraser and Kruger deeded their land to the park.
As the U.S. House of Representatives debated the issue of creating a Virgin Islands park, many questions arose. Some concerned the implications to the territory of removing land from the territory's tax base that would cost the local government $5,000 a year in property taxes.
Fortwangler said Congressman Alfred Westland opposed creating a national park because Congress already had been generous to the territory by making it a duty-free port. And he wanted residents to chart their own course rather than have the federal government dictate events.
In the Senate, there was debate about the cost of running a park in such a remote location.
Congress eventually approved bills authorizing the park, which was signed into existence by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on Aug. 2, 1956. The legislation set forth a park consisting of 9,458 acres on St. John plus 50 acres for administrative offices at Red Hook on St. Thomas. The park was dedicated on Dec. 1, 1956, in ceremonies attended by the National Park Service director, Conrad Wirth; Interior Secretary Fred Seaton and Laurence Fockefeller.
On that same day, Rockefeller reopened his newly renovated Caneel Bay Plantation — today's Caneel Bay Resort.
After the park came into existence, all was not smooth sailing, however. Relations between the federal government and the people of St. John reached a low in August 1961, when the U.S. Senate passed legislation calling for taking the private land remaining within the park boundaries by condemnation procedures.
By the time the measure got to the House of Representatives in the fall of 1962, the St. John community got wind of it. With V.I. Sen. Theovald Moorehead and long-time St. John resident Ethel McCully in the forefront, an uproar ensued, and the House killed the bill.
Rockefeller kept ownership of the Caneel Bay property and resort, with the proceeds going to the Jackson Hole Preserve, until 1983, when he deeded the land to the park, while retaining possession of the resort. Three years later, he sold the resort, which today is owned by banking interests and is operated by the upscale Rosewood resort chain that also includes the properties of Little Dix Bay in the British Virgin Islands and Jumby Bay in Antigua.
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