Salt River Bay National Historical Park and Ecological Preserve

Sadly, there isn’t much to write about this visit that was barely one.

The main contact station was badly damaged by Hurricane Maria in 2017 and has been closed ever since. I’m quite disappointed in the National Park Service’s neglect in not making even minimal repairs to this site so it can be open to the public again.

Granted, it is not as popular as Yellowstone, which saw washed-out highways repaired in weeks last summer, but as one of the anointed 424 official units of the Park Service, something should have been done in the past nearly six years to reopen this facility.

I read on the National Parks Travellers Club website that one could still walk to the visitor contact center site (with great views) even though the road was gated. We tried to find it but had no luck since there are no signs pointing the way, and Google Maps looked like it was taking us onto private property.

We did catch a few nice views of the bay while driving around and stopped at the only place where I saw a Park Service sign mentioning the park by name. This was the Columbus Landing Spot, claimed to be the only United States soil on which Columbus set foot. This happened during his second voyage and is probably more of a guessed location than absolute certainty (it would have helped if one of the rocks had scratched into it “C.C. was here, 1493” but no such luck).

The Park Service website indicates that we can get our Passport stamp and other information at the Christiansted National Historic Site, our planned visit for Sunday.

Steve