US Minor Outlying Islands - Jarvis Island
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The United States Minor Outlying Islands consist of nine United States insular areas in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea: Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Palmyra Atoll, and Wake Island. The Caribbean territories of Bajo Nuevo Bank and Serranilla Bank can also be included as per U.S. sources.
Jarvis Island is an uninhabited 4.5 square kilometer (1.75 sq. mile) coral island located in the South Pacific Ocean at 0° 22' S, 160° 01' W, about halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands. It is an unincorporated, unorganized territory of the United States, administered by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service of the United States Department of the Interior as part of the National Wildlife Refuge system. Unlike most coral atolls, the lagoon on Jarvis is wholly dry.
Jarvis is one of the southern Line Islands and for statistical purposes is also grouped as one of the United States Minor Outlying Islands.
While a few offshore anchorage spots are marked on maps, Jarvis island has no ports or harbors, and swift currents are a hazard. The center of Jarvis island is a dried lagoon where deep guano deposits accumulated, which were mined for about 20 years during the 19th century. The island has a tropical desert climate, with high daytime temperatures, constant wind, and strong sun. Nights, however, are quite cool. The ground is mostly sandy and reaches 7 meters (23 ft) at its highest point. The low-lying coral island has long been noted as hard to sight from small ships and is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef.
Located only 25 miles south of the equator, Jarvis has no natural freshwater lens and scant rainfall. This creates a very bleak, flat landscape without any plants larger than shrubs. There is no evidence that the island has ever supported a self-sustaining human population. Its sparse bunch grass, prostrate vines and low-growing shrubs are primarily a nesting, roosting, and foraging habitat for seabirds, shorebirds, and marine wildlife.
The island's first known sighting by Europeans was on 21 August 1821 by the British ship Eliza Francis owned by Edward, Thomas, and William Jarvis, and commanded by Captain Brown. In March 1857 the uninhabited island was claimed for the United States under the Guano Islands Act and formally annexed on 27 February 1858.
Beginning in 1858, several support structures were built, along with a two-story, eight-room "superintendent's house" featuring an observation cupola and wide verandas. Tram tracks were laid down for bringing mined guano to the western shore. For the following twenty-one years, Jarvis was commercially mined for guano, sent to the United States as fertilizer, but the island was abruptly abandoned in 1879. New Zealand entrepreneurs then made unsuccessful attempts to continue guano extraction on Jarvis, and the two-story house was sporadically inhabited during the early 1880s.
The United Kingdom annexed the island on 3 June 1889. Phosphate and copra entrepreneur John T. Arundel visited the island in 1909 and near the beach landing on the western shore a tumbled, pyramidal day beacon made from slats of wood was repaired, painted white and stood at least until 1942.
Jarvis Island was reclaimed by the United States government and colonized from March 26, 1935 onwards, under the Baker, Howland and Jarvis Colonization Scheme. President Franklin D. Roosevelt assigned administration of the island to the U.S. Department of the Interior on May 13, 1936. Starting out as a cluster of large, open tents pitched next to the still-standing white wooden day beacon, the Millersville settlement on the island's western shore was named after a bureaucrat with the United States Department of Air Commerce.
At the beginning of World War II, an Imperial Japanese Navy submarine surfaced off the west coast of the Island. Believing that it was a U.S. Navy submarine which had come to fetch them, the four young colonists rushed down the steep western beach in front of tiny Millersville towards the shore. The submarine answered their waves with fire from its deck gun, but no one was hurt in the attack. On February 7, 1942, the USCGC Taney evacuated the colonists, then shelled and burned the dwellings.
Jarvis was visited by scientists during the International Geophysical Year from July 1957 until November 1958. The island was then abandoned again. All scattered building ruins remaining from both the 19th century guano diggings and the 1935-1942 colonization attempt were swept away without a trace by a severe storm, witnessed by the scientists, and lasting several days in January 1958. By the early 1960s a few sheds, a century of accumulated trash, the scientists' house from the late 1950s, and a solid, short, lighthouse-like day beacon built two decades before were the only signs of human habitation on Jarvis.
Since June 27, 1974, Jarvis Island has been administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the Jarvis Island National Wildlife Refuge (one of the United States Pacific Island Wildlife Refuges). A feral cat population that caused much disruption to the local ecology was removed by the early 1980s. 19th century tram track remains can reportedly still be seen in the dried lagoon bed at the island's middle, and the late 1930s-era lighthouse still stands on the western shore at the site of Millersville. Public entry to Jarvis Island requires a special-use permit and is generally restricted to scientists and educators. The island is visited periodically by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the United States Coast Guard.
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