Cinnamon Bay Plantation Ruins

Cinnamon Bay Plantation Ruins are the stone and brick remains of a Danish sugar plantation on St. John, across North Shore Road from the Cinnamon Bay Campground entrance. The associated half-mile Nature Loop takes about 30 to 60 minutes and carries you from the ruins into shaded forest, so it fits neatly into a North Shore drive without becoming a full-day hike.

The first 0.09 mile is a four-foot-wide, nearly level boardwalk described as wheelchair- and stroller-friendly. Beyond that, the loop is packed earth with roots, rocks and moderate slopes, so the full route is not an accessible boardwalk walk. The separate one-mile Cinnamon Bay Trail starts east of the ruins and climbs more steeply toward the America Hill area.

Waysides explain the plantation and the surrounding plants and animals. Along the loop, look for bay rum, tyre palm and genip trees, the gut that supplied water to the plantation, and the above-ground family tombs of Anna Margarethe and her children in a shady grove.

The plantation is dated to 1717 in visitor material; the first formal Danish deed for the property is recorded in 1718. Enslaved Africans were forced to work the estate. During St. John's 1733 revolt against Danish rule, the plantation dwelling, storage building and boiling house were burned, and cane fields were set alight. In 1903, the land shifted toward bay-rum trees, whose leaves supplied fragrant oil for St. John Bay Rum cologne and lotions.