St. John, USVI
Yawzi Point Trail

This is where people with "yaws" were forced to live.

18. Yawzi Point Trail

Length: 0.3 miles. Time: 20 minutes. Difficulty: 1. Trailhead: Starts at the end of the beach at Little Lameshur Bay. Take Route 107 from Coral Bay.

This very short trail is named for outcasts infected with yaws, the West Indian version of leprosy--who were forced to live in isolation on this narrow peninsula.

Yaws, which is confined almost exclusively to the warm moist tropics, causes eruptions on the skin and is highly contagious, transmitted either by flies or by direct contact with an open sore.

Once considered a tropical form of syphilis, yaws can appear on any part of the body. Sexual contact is the least likely way it is spread. It is easily treated today. Consider what it must have been like to be exiled in this region of thorny scrub vegetation and isolated coves.

The trail ends at a rocky point with a good view to the east of Great Lameshur Bay and, to the west, St. John's southern coast.

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