East End B Quarter

East End B quarter contains the ruins of four windmills, the fewest of any quarter on St. Croix. The dry conditions on the east end of St. Croix along with the smaller size in square miles or acres in relation to other quarters both help explain this small number. 

No settlement is indicated in the French period on the 1671 map. The estates where windmills were eventually constructed all indicated cotton planted on the 1750 map. An explanation for this early planting is the majority of English squatters on St. Croix lived on the east end, partially explaining the nature of the estates being established in a less regular fashion than in other quarters. The Danish administration accepted these squatters as a necessary contribution to the successful settlement of St. Croix. 

The only East End B estate planted in sugar on the 1750 map is estate 7, Gumbs Land, an estate depicted with an animal mill through 1770 and likely ceasing sugar cultivation by the 1790s. The McGuire geographic dictionary of the Virgin Islands (p. 70) indicates that no one living in the 1920s remembered cultivation in East End B quarter, and describes the water pumped by fan mills for the lean cattle as brackish. McGuire describes the quarter as “deserted, except by a few negro caretakers.”