St. David's Island, Bermuda

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

St. David's, in 1676. The shape of St. David's Island, and of Castle Harbour (originally Southampton Harbour), was radically altered by the consruction of an airfield in 1941, Kindley Field, by the US Army.

St. David's Island is one of the main islands of Bermuda. It is located in the far north of the territory, one of the two similarly sized islands that makeup the majority of St. George's Parish.

The island was originally 503 acres in size (2.0 square kilometres), but was enlarged by reclamation in 1942 to 650 acres (2.6 square kilometres) to allow room for a US military base (originally the US Army's Fort Bell/Kindley Field, later Kindley Air Force Base, and then USNAS Bermuda) which occupied over half the island. The base was closed in 1995, but much of its facilities are still used as part of Bermuda International Airport. Cooper's Island is now attached to St. David's in the southeast, although the two islands are still widely regarded as if they were separate entities

St. David's Island, as it appears today.

The island was named in honour of Saint David, the patron saint of Wales, as the similarly sized St. George's Island, to the north, had been named for the patron saint of England. The two islands are separated by two bodies of water - Ferry Reach in the south-west and St. George's Harbor in the north-east. St. David's is separated from the Bermudian mainland by the waters of Castle Harbor in the south, but is joined to it by road via The Causeway.

Notable features of the island include St. David's Head, Bermuda's easternmost point, and the nearby St. David's Battery, on Great Head (Great Head is the more prominent of two headland which comprise St. David's Head); Bermuda International Airport; St. David's Lighthouse; and Annie's Bay on Cooper's Island.

St. David's Island is connected to the United States by an Atlantic fiber Optic cable known as 360 Americas. [1]