Virgin Islands National Park to Expand

A national park covering more than half the island of St. John will acquire 415 acres of pristine coastal land by the end of the year, a preservation group said late last week.

The Maho Bay property, which includes white-sand beaches and jungles, will be the largest addition to the 7,150-acre Virgin Islands National Park since its creation in 1956.

The Trust for Public Land, a San Francisco-based nonprofit, reached a deal to buy the undeveloped property from its private owners after more than five years of negotiations, said spokesman John Garrison. The preservation group plans to sell it to the National Park Service.

Preservationists had feared developers would build on the land, which features ruins of colonial plantations and is believed to have pre-Columbian Indian village sites.

The waters of the property on St. John, the smallest island of the U.S. Caribbean territory, feature seagrass beds, green turtles and coral reefs visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists each year.