U.S. Virgin Islands · VI

Monks Bath Beach

Monk's Bath is one of St. Croix's most peculiar and delightful coastal secrets: a rectangular pool carved straight into sharp coral rock on the island's remote northwest shore, filled and emptied by the Atlantic through a natural arch. Just three miles north of Frederiksted, it sits beside a tiny rocky beach where you'll very likely have the whole shoreline to yourself. The bath's name hints at a romantic legend—monks from the Knights of Malta supposedly carved Roman-style pools here in the 1600s—but the real story is far more human. In the 1950s, a resident named Dick Richards hired a contractor with a jackhammer to convert an abandoned 1840s coral quarry into a personal swimming pool, cutting flat walls and steps into the living reef.