Navassa Island: A Photographic Tour

Navassa Island Home take a Tour: take a Tour: geology | biology | history or Explore: fly | sail | hike | scuba Navassa Location Map		Explore Navassa - History Phosphorite Mining, Caribbean Beacon   begin   history of the "Guano Rush"   In 1857, the phosphorite on Navassa was mistaken for guano by a U.S. sea captain who laid claim to the island under the Guano Island Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 1855. Between 1865 and 1898 almost a million tons of the phosphorite were strip-mined from the island and shipped to Baltimore by the Navassa Phosphate Co. The island was abandoned during the Spanish American War, but by that time it was firmly established as US territory. The opening of the Panama Canal put Navassa in the middle of the traffic lanes between the Atlantic and Caribbean, and the Coast Guard built a lighthouse on the island in 1917. Global Positioning Systems eliminated the need for the lighthouse by 1996, and the Coast Guard turned Navassa over to U.S. Department of Interior on January 16, 1997. History - Photo Index Maps     historic map     historic sketch Phosphate Mining     phosphate     mining ruins     railroad bed     rusted boiler     railroad bed     mining mound     railroad bed Lighthouse     construction     complete     today     keeper's house
Coastal and Marine Geology Program > Center for Coastal Geology > Navassa Island > History Tour U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Coastal and Marine Geology Program http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/navassa/history/index.html Maintaned by Trent Faust - Webmaster Updated August 19, 2000 @ 04:27 PM (THF)