Chocolate Hole, Virgin Islands Webcam

Category: Harbor

Chocolate Hole Bay is located on St. John, an island in the Caribbean Sea and a constituent district of the United States Virgin Islands.

St. John was first settled by the Arawak Indians who had migrated north from coastal Colombia and Venezuela around AD 300. The Arawaks inhabited the island until around the year AD 1300, when they were driven off by the more aggressive and warlike Carib Indians.

Christopher Columbus is credited with being the first European to see the Virgin Islands during his second voyage to the New World in 1493. The Danish West India and Guinea Company represented the first Europeans to settle the island in 1718. The Danish crown took full control of the colony in 1754. Sugar plantations, were established in great numbers on St. John because of the intense heat and fertile terrain, which provided ideal growing conditions.

In 1917 the United States purchased the U.S. Virgin Islands for $25 million from the Danish government in order to establish a naval base whose purpose was to prevent German expansion in the Western Hemisphere. They also agreed to recognize Denmark’s claim to Greenland, which they had previously disputed.