Somewhere East of Suwannee

Greetings from the easternmost point in the United States, Point Udall¹ on the edge of St. Croix.

Looking east from Point Udall, the easternmost point in the United States, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.

To get there, you go all the way out the East End Road, through land cleared during the New Deal by Civilian Conservation Corps workers. Local memory of this is pretty sound, though there’s no official memorial. There’s a “Coral Conservation Corps” plaque on a building at Cramer’s Park, a popular CCC-built beach (the men cleared it of brush and boar). The Coral Conservation Corps are a youth organization sponsored by local businesses; someone clearly had the original CCC in mind.

A low building with a Coral Conservation Corps plaque at Cramer’s Park, named for New Deal governor Lawrence Cramer by the locals.

The CCC-cleared East End is also home to a telescope of the Very Long Baseline Array.

A low building at Cramer’s Park, under renovation, with the radiotelescope of the VLBA in the background.

So what with the popularity of Cramer’s Park and the VLBA this is very much a living part of the New Deal.

Bathers in the Caribbean at Cramer’s Park beach, St. Croix, US Virgin Islands.

Footnotes

1. This one’s named after Stewart. The other one, in Guam, which is the westernmost point in the United States, is named after Mo. Although you could argue about which is east of which.