Virtual Preservation of Colonial Structures in the Virgin Islands National Park

A multidisciplinary team of interns from the University of Maine and other universities by the ruins of a windmill to draw water from a well in the Virgin Islands National Park on St. John.

Several students will work as interns in the Virgin Islands National Park in March 2006 on a project to preserve the history of the brutal Danish colonial era sugar plantation system. Thousands of Africans were captured and brought to the island of St. John, then forced to work growing and processing sugar cane. Mechanical Engineering Technology students will work with the Archeologist and Cultural Resource Manager in the park to virtually preserve structures and sites using close range photogrammetry and other techniques. Read the related article regarding the 2004 student trip here.

Within the 14,689 acres of the Virgin Islands National Park (the Park) on St. John lie the remains of the most complete representation of the Danish Colonial Period and post-emancipation era including plantations, forts, military barracks, and other structures. The now idyllic beaches providing vacation recreation for visitors were once guarded gateways of escape to other islands for the captured and enslaved African people forced to worked on the island. Near popular beach destinations, visited by over one million tourists in 2004, only a few of the ruins of buildings built by these forcibly enslaved people have been stabilized and thus preserved for the present. Approximately six hundred structures in the Park are deteriorating and doomed to become piles of rubble due to jungle encroachment. The difficult terrain, the lack of access roads, and insufficient funds prevent the physical preservation of the ruins. Most of the Park's visitors are probably unaware of the extraordinary cultural resource these structures represent.

This project, funded by the Virgin Islands Humanities Council, the Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park, and the National Park Service, will develop source materials "that will provide a richer pool of information relating to the history and cultural heritage or the Virgin Islands." [i] One method of preserving the current state of the structures located in the Park boundaries for study by future generations is to capture their construction, images, and locations using several virtual preservation methods based on computer graphics and geographic information system (GIS) software. Through this project, the University of Maine (UM), principal investigators and interns will develop a three-dimensional computer model with a realistic appearance of a portion of the plantation site at Leinster Bay. The model will be as accurate and as accessible to the public via the internet or via a compact disc as possible. The benefits of a three-dimensional computer model are that viewers can study it from all perspectives (unlike a flat photograph) and information about the size and location of points on the model is embedded in the model.

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[i] Virgin Islands Humanities Council Guide to the Community Grants Program.