Solitude is estate 10 in St. Croix’s East End B Quarter. Cotton Valley was involved in both cotton and sugar production. Sugar was produced here after 1794 and the windmill constructed by 1856. This windmill tower is in very good condition.
Estate Solitude had sugar production arise after 1794, not atypical for an estate on the far East End. Like the entire eastern one third of St. Croix, no habitation is shown during the French period. The plantation is in cotton production by 1750. In what should all be estate 10, the northwest corner includes a subdivision for estate 37. This represents a carve out most likely from squatters present on St. Croix when the Danish took ownership in 1733.
On the variations of the Beck map in the 1750s and 1760s, an additional split in ownership is shown on the coast, in the northern extremity of the estate. The maps of the 1790s show shifting land ownership along the coast. Oxholm depicts Solitude as a cotton plantation. By 1856, Parsons indicates a windmill atop the hill at Solitude, with a structure to the west and a village to the north, down the hill. Both iterations of the USGS topographic map show the mill base at an elevation of just over 100 feet, with the 1921 map indicating the mill top at an elevation of 140 feet, estimating a mill tower height over 30 feet.