Trip to Pine Cay

This week I am traveling to Pine Cay and Provo fund raising for the museum with one of our trustees. This morning we were notified that we have received our NOAA grant of $100,000 to continue the Trouvadore project. We are beginning to raise the matching funds for this grant.

Yesterday, we arrived in Pine Cay as a guest of Dr. Tom and Jean Wiese, from Lima, Ohio. Pine Cay is a private island with a small resort hotel of 12 rooms and just over 30 private residences. The Island was one of the first private developments in the TCI. The project began in 1971 as an environmental communal development. The idea was that most of the island would be placed into a nature preserve, with a few understated residences. There are some owners that have been on Pine Cay for 20 to 30 years. New owners, however, are from very wealthy families and new houses are far from the understated environmentally friendly places of the 70s. The island is still very, very nice though.

The highlight of the trip was a trip tp Fort St. George. This was an English fort established to protect the fresh water ponds located on Pine Cay and Water Cay during the French take over of Haiti from 1798 to 1806.

The stone foundations of the fort are still visable, as well as cultural material still on top of the ground. Some of the owners on Pine Cay have been going to the fort for years mapping and surveying and locating cannons. They have also been doing their own research, one guy even going to London to work in archives there. They would be very interested in the museum doing something with the fort or incorporating the story and artifacts into the new museum on Provo. This is great, but where do we get the time or money.

Today we arrived back on Provo where we will be for the rest of the week. We met with the National Trust. During this meeting we were told that about a year ago the cay, known as Fort George Cay, was to be given to the Trust to monitor and manage. Now, it has been give to a private developer who is going to build a "tropical fish museum." Is it me, or is that crazy?