Sandy Cay: Once a Tycoon’s Pet Project, Now a BVI National Park

By Claudia Colli

If you want pure Caribbean bliss, dive into the waters off Sandy Cay, the BVI’s Robinson Crusoe island.

I have been going to Sandy Cay for as many years as I have lived in the BVI, and it never fails to delight. The water is crystal clear, and such a vivid turquoise that it looks as if Photoshop altered the colors. Its sandy beach is as pure and white as a beach can get. There is a small nature trail that leads to the other side of this compact 13 plus acre isle, an easy and non-stressful walk that takes you through a dry scrub environment.

_{Swimming off Sandy Cay, the BVI’s Robinson Crusoe island. (Photo courtesy of BVI National Parks Trust)}

This Virgin Islands National Park is indeed a special place with a history that goes back over 50 years when it was acquired by Laurance Rockefeller, the noted American philanthropist and conservationist.

Laurance Rockefeller had a special relationship with the BVI. Son of the famed Standard Oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, he was a successful businessman in his own right. A dedicated conservationist, he was early to recognize that development endangered some of the most remote and wildly beautiful areas in the Virgin Islands, and unlike others, he had the resources to do something about it.

In the 1950s, when Rockefeller sailed throughout the Virgin Islands – both British and US – the islands were agrarian and undeveloped. He grew to love these islands’ beauty and charm, but saw that to lift these islands out of poverty, they needed a tourist economy. He built Caneel Bay, the area’s first luxury hotel on a sumptuous stretch of beach on St. John’s north shore in 1956. And then surrounded it with an initial purchase of 5,000 acres of land, which he donated to the US National Parks Service. The bequest, became the Virgin Islands National Park, the US’s only national park in the Caribbean.

*_{Sandy Cay, which was acquired by Laurance Rockefeller, became a BVI National Park in 2008.}*

Rockefeller set out to do the same thing in the neighboring British Virgin Islands. In 1961 he leased 365 acres on Virgin Gorda from the BVI government and built the luxury hotel, Little Dix Bay. It was a development that would help jumpstart the territory’s nascent tourism industry.

Rockefeller then donated sufficient money to the British Virgin Islands government to purchase 90 acres of land crowning Sage Mountain. Located on Tortola, it is the BVI’s highest peak. Adding to the largesse, he also donated seven acres at Spring Bay, locally known as the Crawl, and some 20 acres at Devil’s Bay, both on Virgin Gorda. These donations would become the basis of the BVI’s National Parks Trust which was established in 1961.

One of his favorite islands, though, was one of the smallest. Sandy Cay, a little gem off the eastern coast of Jost Van Dyke was an island with an important ecosystem of nesting turtles and birds and abundant plant life. In addition to a wide powdery sand beach, the landscape includes dry coastal woodland, a small salt pond, mangrove wetlands and rocky terrain.

_{Nesting birds are among the delights that can be spotted on the Sandy Cay nature trail in The BVI. (Photo Kate Garvey)}

The island is an important nesting site for the hawksbill turtle, green turtle, the leatherback turtle, the laughing gull, bridled tern and the spectacular red-billed tropicbird. This abundance of riches also includes such plant species as the rare tyre palm (found in only a few places on Tortola and St. John), the Turk’s Cap Cactus, and an uncommon cactus spcies, Opuntia rubescens. The central wetland area also contains a mangrove swamp dominated by white mangrove.

Rockefeller owned Sandy Cay for 40 years maintaining it as a protected island with no development. During that time, Rockefeller’s conservation management team planted over 200 palm trees, instituted a long-term bird and turtle monitoring program, and created a trail network for visitors to explore its almost 14 acres.

Rockefeller had always intended to turn Sandy Cay over to the Virgin Islands government. To accomplish the handover in a responsible and orderly fashion, from 2002 to 2008 he enlisted the Island Resources Foundation under the direction of Dr. Edward Towle to coordinate with the National Parks Trust and the BVI Government to ensure that Sandy Cay would be maintained in perpetuity as a freely available, publicly accessible managed wilderness area.

The transfer was completed in 2008. Unfortunately, both Dr. Towle and Laurance Rockefeller passed away prior to the handover, but their legacy remains embedded into the island that was their vision.

You can only reach Sandy Cay by boat, and it is one of the most popular ports of calls on the BVI boating circuit. Whenever I am there, I enjoy swimming in its transparent water, and walking along its beach and nature trail, a reminder of how much the BVI has so much to offer.

When on Sandy Cay, keep an eye out for its hidden treasures: ground lizards and crabs scuttling along the sand, a Turks head cactus in bloom, frigates and pelicans soaring overhead, and sweeping views of Tortola and Jost Van Dyke. Or just sit beneath a coconut palm and contemplate how Robinson Crusoe might have felt on his desert island.