Navassa

Sitting off the Haitian peninsula, 30 miles due west, is La Navase Island. Made of inhospitable rocky terrain, it eventually became a guano mining operation in the mid-1800s.

Guano mining stopped in 1898. The abandoned island remained so until 1914 because of a light house constructed there.

Following World War II, La Navase stood bereft of life again. By 1999, the U.S.Department of the Interior sold the island to Fish and Wildlife Service to be used as a nature reserve.

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Lying in the Caribbean Sea, two-square mile Navassa Island rests 30 miles off Cape Tiburon, Haiti.

Its rocky landscape permits no human life there, its only use for guano mining, which ceased post the 1898 Spanish-American War.

Navassa became active again in 1914, when a light house was installed there. At the close of World War II, the island stood empty once more.

Fish and Wildlife Service received a deed to Navassa to use as a wildlife refuge in 1999.

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