St. Thomas Facts

St. Thomas is the busiest of the three United States Virgin Islands. With 28 square miles of lush green hills and sandy beaches, St. Thomas and the nearby island of St. John see nearly 1.7 million visitors a year, far more than their sister island of St. Croix.

Charlotte Amalie

The island's main town, Charlotte Amalie, bustles like any small city with vacationers shopping and residents heading off to work. Traffic can pile up along the waterfront Route 30, called Veterans Drive, and the city's main parking lot adjacent to Fort Christian is often filled. Despite the surface buzz, it is easy to find quiet pockets away from Charlotte Amalie and other busy areas.

The island, a Danish colony until...

...is the busiest cruise-ship harbor in the West Indies. Bustling Charlotte Amalie, with its white houses and bright red roofs glistening in the sun, is one of the most beautiful towns in the Caribbean. It's most famous for shopping, but the town is also filled with historic sights, like Fort Christian, an intriguing 17th-century building constructed by the Danes. Outside of town, the beaches are renowned for their white sand and calm, turquoise waters, including the very best of them all, Magens Bay.

Things to Do

Pretty 18th-century buildings surround the harbor of the active port of Charlotte Amalie, where warehouses once filled with pirate booty still stand. Watch butterflies flutter at the...