Establishment of Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park

Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park protects a large eighteenth-century fortress on a volcanic hill on the island of Saint Kitts. The fortress was built by the British, with enslaved African labour, and was sometimes called the Gibraltar of the West Indies for its strategic position over the sea lanes of the Caribbean. It was besieged and captured by the French in 1782 during the American War of Independence, but returned to Britain by treaty the following year. The British garrison left in the nineteenth century and the fort fell into ruin, before restoration began in the twentieth. The park was established in 1987 and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.

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