In 1733, the Danish West india & Guinea Company brought St. Croix from France. When the first Danish colonists from St. Thomas arrived on the newly purchased island they found, amongst other ruins, a French earthwork fortification. The Danes repaired and rearmed it in 1734 however, the storm in 1738 caused the serious damage to the earthwork, and the colonial administration decided to replace it on the same site with a permanent masonry struture. The new fort, called Christiansvaern (Christian's Defense) was named in honor of the King Christian VI of Demark and Norway. It design was based on standardized European military architecture. Construction took eleven years (1738-1749) because of the logistics of importing hundreds of thousands of bricks from Denmark. The fort was demilitarized in 1878 and converted for civilian use into a jail, police station, and courthouse--a function that continued for almost 90 years. Fort Christiansvaern is the best preserved of the five Danish forts remaining in the West Indies. The fort is a wonderful example of Danish colonial military architecture. Although built for defense against pirate and privateers as well as to ward off slave uprising, its cannons have never known warfare. --National Park Services, U.S. Department of the Interior
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