Estate Whim St Croix Virgin Islands 3D model

Whim is the oldest sugar plantation museum in the Virgin Islands. Its purpose is to increase the understanding of a colonial sugar plantation to both island residents and visitors. Exhibits and guided tours are designed to interpret the economics of a plantation, explain the procedures used in the cultivation and processing of sugar, and describe the everyday life of the people who lived and worked there. Estate Whim is typical of the agricultural plantations originally laid out in the 1730's by the Danish West Indian Company. The first records of ownership were in 1743, and show cotton as being grown on the estate. By 1754, sugar had apparently become the main crop and so it continued until the 1920's, when sugar, long since an unprofitable industry on the island, gave way to cattle. In 1932, the United States federal government purchased the entire plantation. For the next fifteen years, a largely unsuccessful attempt was made to introduce the homesteading program to St. Croix, and Whim was one of the areas chosen for this trial. Even though a failure in many ways, this venture in homesteading did serve to break up persistent, large-acreage ownership and started a trend of small, private land holdings that continues throughout the island today.