Frederiksted

Frederiksted is Christiansted’s quieter, slightly melancholy cousin on the west side of St. Croix. Where Christiansted has the intact Danish commercial arcades and the tourist energy, Frederiksted has a broad waterfront boulevard, a few pastel Victorian buildings in various states of repair, and a long wooden pier that extends into the sea and doubles at night as one of the Caribbean’s most productive dive sites. The town is unhurried in a way that feels honest rather than aspirational.

The Pier, Day and Night

The Frederiksted Pier is central to what makes this town worth visiting. During the day it’s a pleasant place to walk — cruise ships occasionally dock here, though less frequently than Charlotte Amalie — and you can look down through the clear water at the life congregating on the pilings. But the night dive is the real thing.

After dark, the waters under and around the pier come alive with creatures that spend the daylight hours hidden in crevices and sand: seahorses — several species, including some of the largest I’ve seen in the Caribbean — drift near the pilings in pairs. Flying gurnards shuffle across the sandy bottom on their modified fins. Spotted drums, which look as if someone designed them using a black-and-white graphic design brief, move in slow deliberate circles near coral heads. Octopus. Reef squid hovering in the lights. Juvenile fish in quantity.

I went with a local dive shop — there are two or three operating out of Frederiksted and they all know these waters in the specific way that comes from having dived the same site hundreds of times. My divemaster pointed out a seahorse that, without her help, I would have taken for a piece of algae.

The Town Between the Pier and the Rainforest

Frederiksted sits at the western end of the Centerline Road, which crosses St. Croix east-to-west through the middle of the island, passing through the rainforest that occupies the northwest highlands — a small but genuine rainforest, with tree ferns and mahogany and a population of white-tailed deer that materializes out of the undergrowth at unexpected moments. The contrast between the dry eastern coast and the wet northwest is one of the more striking things about St. Croix’s geography.

The fort at Frederiksted — Fort Frederik, built in 1752 — is smaller than the one in Christiansted but has its own historical weight. It was here, in 1848, that the enslaved people of St. Croix gathered in rebellion and where Governor General Peter von Scholten declared emancipation, ahead of official Danish policy. The event is commemorated with more specificity here than most Caribbean colonial history tends to be.

Eating and Staying

The restaurant options in Frederiksted are limited and the better ones are small. Beach Side Cafe at Sandy Point does weekend lunches with fresh fish and a view of one of the island’s better beaches. La Reine Chicken Shack, a few miles down the road, is the kind of local institution that has developed cult status among the island’s food-aware visitors — rotisserie chicken, rice and beans, macaroni salad, the sauce.

A few small guesthouses operate in and around Frederiksted for people who want the quieter side of St. Croix. The town is twenty minutes from Christiansted by car or bus, which makes day-tripping straightforward.

When to go: Year-round for the pier dive — the marine life is there regardless of season, though visibility is better in the dry months (January through April). The weekend market in Frederiksted’s waterfront park runs on Saturdays and gives the town a livelier energy. If a cruise ship is docked, the pier area gets briefly crowded midday; plan your dive for evening regardless.