Virgin Islands Geography

The territory is three main islands and roughly fifty islets and cays, at the point where the Greater Antilles meet the Lesser, about 1,600 kilometres southeast of Florida.

St. Thomas and St. John are steep and volcanic, sharing a submarine shelf with the British Virgin Islands just across the water — on a clear day you can see Tortola from a St. John beach. Their deep, sheltered bays are why Charlotte Amalie became a harbour town.

St. Croix is a different structure entirely: separated from the others by a 4,000-metre-deep trench, flatter, and large enough in its west end to have supported serious sugar plantations. This is why its history and its landscape diverge so sharply from the other two.

The whole group sits inside a reef system, which is what makes the snorkelling good and the coastline fragile. About 60% of St. John, plus much of its surrounding water, is Virgin Islands National Park.