Point Udall: First Light at the Easternmost Point of the U.S.

The drive from The Cerulean

This is the easiest outing on the island because you are already on the East End. The point is a little over three miles from the villa in a straight line and about ten minutes by road, give or take a few for the hills; the Jack and Isaac trailhead, just short of the point, is about a five-minute drive. The last leg is Route 82, the East End Road, which runs out along the north shore past Cramer's Park, the public beach park, and the white radio-telescope dish, then climbs to the headland. There is nothing to buy along the way, so leave the villa with coffee already in hand.

The end of the road is the part to respect. It is narrow and winding: a paved but tight climb with rock and scrub close on both sides and no lighting. Drive it slowly in the dark, use your high beams when nobody is coming the other way, and expect the occasional car coming down from someone who beat you to it. Our driving guide covers the island's left-side-of-the-road habit; the East End Road is where you will be glad you read it before dawn.

Parking is a small lot below the monument, and it fills on popular mornings, particularly New Year's Day; parking is limited, so arrive early for sunrise. Do not leave valuables in the car: an empty lot at the end of a road, out of sight of any house, is exactly the kind of place a bag on a back seat goes missing.

What you will not find: a restroom, a water tap, a shop, a shade structure, a ranger, or a reliable phone signal; there is no cell reception and no nearby stores. Plan the morning so that none of that matters, then come back to the villa's kitchen for the breakfast you left half-made.

The radio telescope you drive past

About a mile west of the point, next to Cramer's Park on the East End Road, stands a white dish 25 meters (82 feet) across, tilted at the sky. It is not a satellite dish and not a military installation. It is the St. Croix station of the Very Long Baseline Array, the VLBA, one of ten identical radio telescopes spread across the United States and its territories that observe together as a single instrument. The other nine are on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, in Washington, California, Arizona, two sites in New Mexico, Texas, Iowa, and New Hampshire. St. Croix is the easternmost, which is the whole reason it is here.

The idea is called very long baseline interferometry: telescopes far apart record the same source at the same instant, the recordings are combined, and the array behaves like a dish as wide as the distance between its farthest antennas. For the VLBA that distance, from Mauna Kea to St. Croix, is about 8,611 kilometers, or 5,351 miles; the NRAO's station page describes the result as "an image as though the array were a single antenna with a diameter nearly the diameter of the earth." That is why a small dry island in the Caribbean has a piece of a continent-sized telescope: nobody else under the U.S. flag is this far east.

The numbers are worth having in the car. Each dish is 25 meters in diameter and weighs about 240 tons, or 218 metric tons, the same weight in different units. Construction began in February 1986 and finished in May 1993; the first observation using all ten antennas was made on May 29, 1993, and the NRAO dates the array's dedication to that year. Nobody sits at this dish and looks through it. The array is run remotely from Socorro, New Mexico, and the St. Croix station is staffed to keep the machine healthy in a hard climate: the sea air corrodes parts, and the dish needs painting more often than its mainland siblings.

The hardest day in its life was September 2017. Hurricane Maria damaged both the 240-ton antenna and the building housing its electronics, and in August 2018 the observatory announced $2 million in National Science Foundation disaster-relief funding to put it right; the NSF's astronomy director called the station "the key easternmost element of this continent-sized array." Repairs followed and the dish went back to work. There is no advertised visitor program that we could find; you look at it from the road, which is enough.

Below the point: the Jack and Isaac Bay Preserve

Just short of the monument, on your right as you climb, there is a small parking lot. That is the trailhead for the Jack and Isaac Bay Preserve, 301 acres of upland forest and two undeveloped white-sand bays that The Nature Conservancy has protected since 1999, adjoining a further tract of government-owned natural area. There is no road to either beach. You walk in on foot along a narrow trail, which is precisely why the sand stays empty. Our East End beaches guide and the journal entry on the hike cover the beaches properly; here is only what you need to decide whether to combine them with a sunrise.

The route from the lot runs to East End Bay first, then Isaac Bay, then Jack Bay. The terrain is easy to moderate, mostly upland forest, scrub and beach, with little to no shade on the hike, which matches the whole East End. Isaac Bay is the snorkeling bay, with elkhorn, staghorn and brain corals and at least 400 species of fish offshore; the beaches together hold the largest nesting populations of green and hawksbill turtles on St. Croix. There are no amenities on either beach, no lifeguards, and the water can be choppy with currents. Nesting runs mainly from August into November, so if you find tracks or a marked nest, give it room.

The pairing with sunrise works, with one condition: start down soon after the sun is up. The trail is exposed, the East End is dry, and by mid-morning the heat is real. Carry more water than seems reasonable, wear shoes with soles, put on mineral sunscreen and a hat, and turn around before you are tired rather than after. If the group is mixed, send the walkers down and let the rest drive back to the villa for a swim. What makes the preserve special is that two of the finest beaches on the island sit ten minutes from a private villa and are reached only on foot. Point Udall is the front door to that.

The East End Marine Park around it

Everything in the water around Point Udall, from the surf line out to the three-nautical-mile territorial limit, is inside the St. Croix East End Marine Park. The park was established on January 9, 2003 as the U.S. Virgin Islands' first territorially designated and managed marine protected area. It covers 60 square miles of water along about 17 miles of shoreline, from Green Cay on the north side round the point to Great Pond Bay on the south, and it is managed by the Coastal Zone Management division of the territory's Department of Planning and Natural Resources. The point, the bays below it, and Cramer's Park all sit inside it.

The park is zoned, and the zones matter to visitors. There are recreation areas, where line fishing is allowed from the beach out to 100 feet and spearfishing is not; no-take areas, about 8.6 percent of the park, where nothing may be fished or taken but where you may still snorkel and dive; an open fishing area under standard territorial rules; and a Turtle Wildlife Preserve covering East End Bay, Isaac Bay and Jack Bay out to a mile and a quarter offshore. Leatherback, green and hawksbill turtles nest on the park's beaches, and the bays under Point Udall are among the important nesting grounds; our sea turtles guide explains what that looks like on the sand.

What the park protects is the habitat that makes the snorkeling below the point worth the walk: seagrass meadows that serve as nurseries, shallow linear reefs and patch reefs, deeper reefs offshore, mangroves including the largest remaining tract at Great Pond, and a string of beaches and salt ponds. It sits beside Buck Island Reef National Monument, so between the federal reef and the territorial park, almost the whole northeastern corner of the island's waters is under some kind of protection.

For you the rules reduce to good manners: no spearfishing, no taking anything from the no-take zones, no touching coral, no anchoring on it if you are on a boat, and no disturbing a nesting turtle. Bring mineral sunscreen or a rash guard, since the territory bans the reef-harming chemical kinds. None of it costs you anything, and all of it is why the water below the point still looks the way it does.

Goat Hill and the ridge behind you

Turn your back on the sea and the East End's ridge runs west from the point, low, sun-washed and folded. Its high point is Goat Hill, 672 feet, and the summit is the East End's other great viewpoint. The trailhead is across the street from Cramer's Park, on the east side of the radio telescope: past the dish, a right turn onto a dirt road for about 0.7 miles brings you to an overlook and a fork, and the left fork climbs. It is about two miles round trip, an hour and a half to two hours, on an old four-wheel-drive track that is thoroughly rutted and rocky.

The reward is the only 360-degree view on this end of the island. From the summit you look west down the spine of St. Croix, out over the sea on both sides, north to Buck Island, and east to Point Udall and the two bays below it. The vegetation is sea grape, eugenia and ginger thomas, the last with yellow bell-shaped flowers much of the year. There is no shade at all, cell reception is thin, and going alone is not advised. Our East End ridge hikes guide has the full route; do not do Goat Hill as an afterthought to a sunrise, do it as its own morning, early.

Buck Island is the thing you keep looking at from up here. It sits about a mile and a half off the northeast coast, a low dry-forest island wrapped by an elkhorn barrier reef, a national monument since 1961 and a no-take marine reserve since 2001. From the ridge road and from Goat Hill you see its whole shape, and the nearest boats for it leave from the East End; the Buck Island guide covers the boats, the trail and the rules. From the point itself, Buck Island is off to the north on your left as you face the sunrise, and on a clear morning it takes the first light a moment after the water does.

Wind and weather on the windward end

The East End is the sunny end of St. Croix: low coastal hills and sea grape where the west end has rainforest. The reason is the trade wind. It blows out of the east most of the year, meets the island here first, and drops what rain it carries on the higher ground farther west, so the East End sits in a rain shadow of its own island. For a sunrise visit that means clearer skies on average than the wet side gets, and it means wind. The point takes the trades before anything else on St. Croix, and the monument platform is exposed on three sides.

By season, the pattern most guests notice: December through March brings the strongest, steadiest winds, the so-called Christmas Winds out of the north and northeast, which make the headland blustery and the sea below it white; the sky is at its driest and clearest then. April through June is calmer and still relatively dry. July through November is hurricane season, with the peak from August to October, and it is also the wetter half of the year, with more cloud over the eastern horizon at dawn. Read our weather by month guide for the numbers and our hurricane season guide for the honest odds; a named storm is rare in any given week, cloud at dawn is not.

What this means for the plan is simple. In winter, dress for the wind, not the temperature: a light layer, a hat you can hold onto, and a windbreak in mind (the monument itself works). In summer, come earlier than you think, because the light and the heat both arrive fast. In any month, if the horizon is banked in when you arrive, wait: the trades move cloud quickly, and a gap often opens within the first quarter hour after the official sunrise time. On a gray, windy morning the point is still the end of the road, the bays are still empty, and the platform still faces the emptiest horizon in the country.

Photographing the point

Point Udall photographs better than most famous viewpoints because it has a foreground. The monument gives you a solid, angular shape to set against the sky, and the low scrub and rock give you texture at your feet. The classic frame is from the platform looking southeast in winter, with the monument on one edge and the sun coming up along its line; in summer, when the sun rises north of the monument, swing round and shoot it over the open water with the headland's edge in the lower third. Get there for civil dawn: the twenty minutes before the sun are gold and pink and soft, the five minutes after are hard and white. Our photography guide covers the rest of the island.

The second frame most people miss is behind them. Turn west after sunrise and the first low light rakes across the ridge, Goat Hill and the folded East End hills, with the radio dish a small white shape a mile off and Buck Island a green line to the north; that view is at its best in the ten minutes after the sun clears the horizon, and almost nobody shoots it because they are still facing east. Then look down from the south side of the platform at the bays of the Jack and Isaac preserve, empty, with the reef showing as darker water.

The wind is the technical problem. A light tripod on the platform will shake; hang your bag from it or shoot handheld at a higher shutter speed than you would like. Lens cloths get used, because the air carries salt. If you fly a drone, remember that the point sits inside a territorial marine park above turtle-nesting beaches and that the wind up here is stronger than it feels; keep it short and check the current territorial and FAA rules first. And put the camera down for the two minutes when the sun actually comes up. From the villa's veranda, for the record, you can shoot the same sunrise over your own beach without a drive.

Safety and the small print

Point Udall is not dangerous, but it is unattended and exposed, and a few plain rules cover it. Heat first. There is no shade on the headland or on the trails, the East End is the driest part of the island, and the sun after nine in the morning is strong in every month; carry water, wear a hat, and plan the walking parts of the morning for the first two hours of daylight. Cell reception is poor to absent at the point and thin on Goat Hill, so tell someone at the villa where you are going and when you expect to be back.

Footing second. The platform and lot are paved; everything beyond them is rock, loose gravel and thorn. The edges of the headland drop away steeply to the water, so do not count on a railing: stay back from them, keep children in hand, and never go looking for the actual easternmost rock in the dark or in a strong wind. Wear closed shoes if you plan to step off the pavement at all, and long trousers if you are heading down the trail.

Third, the car. Do not leave anything of value in it, ever, at the point or at the trailhead lot. Take your phone and wallet with you, leave the passports at the villa, and lock up; our car rental directory lists operators if you have not booked one yet.

Finally, the sea. The water below the point and off Jack and Isaac is open to the trades, can be choppy with currents, and has no lifeguard. Swim inside the reef at Isaac Bay in calm conditions and not otherwise, never alone, and never at dawn or dusk when the light on the water is poor. None of this should put you off. It should put you in shoes, with water, with company, and back at the villa's pool by mid-morning.

Mistakes to avoid, and doing it with kids or a crowd

The commonest mistake is arriving at the published sunrise time. By then the color is half over and the sun is a minute from clearing the water; you spend the best light finding a place to park. Be standing on the platform when the sky first grays, and treat the sunrise time as the end of the show, not the start. The second mistake is not checking the time zone; East Coast visitors in winter set their phones an hour wrong more often than you would think. The third is walking down to Isaac Bay in flip-flops "just to look." Either commit to the hike with shoes and water, or admire the bays from above and go back for breakfast.

With children, Point Udall works better than most sunrise outings because it is so short: ten minutes in the car, a short walk, half an hour of standing about, ten minutes home. Bring blankets, because the wind makes a mild dawn feel cool to a child in a T-shirt, and bring something to eat. Give them the two facts that land: the sun is touching America here first, and there is another Point Udall on the far side of the world where it touches America last. Keep them off the edges, and let them be the ones who spot Buck Island. Our St. Croix with kids guide has more of this kind of thing.

With a large group, the constraint is the parking lot and the platform, both small. Take two cars, not four, and go on a weekday if you can. Do not try to bring the whole villa: a house of twelve at Point Udall at 6 am is eight people who wanted to sleep. The right sunrise party is three to five, the ones who actually want it, and the rest get the veranda version and the coffee. For an anniversary, a proposal or a birthday the point delivers, provided you accept that another car may pull in behind you; there is no way to reserve the easternmost point of the United States. And do not stay too long: the best light is gone twenty minutes after sunrise.

Sunrise from the villa or sunrise at the point

Here is the honest comparison, because The Cerulean faces the same sunrise. The villa's veranda, pool deck and beach look east over the reef, and on any clear morning you can watch the sun come up over your own water without leaving the house. Suzanne Temple, who stayed in March 2026, called the sunrises "incredible" in her review, and a whole journal entry, why the mornings are the point, exists because guests keep saying the same thing.

So why drive anywhere? Three reasons. Point Udall gives you the last-land-in-America fact, and facts of that kind are worth standing on once. It gives you a wider horizon than the villa's, with the sun coming out of the sea unframed by anything. And it is the trailhead for Jack and Isaac, so a sunrise there can turn into an empty beach by seven-thirty. The villa gives you sleep, silence, coffee from your own kitchen, a swim right after, and a private beach where the only footprints are yours. The two are not in competition; they are two mornings.

The plan we suggest to guests: on your first morning, sunrise from the veranda, because you have just arrived and the villa should get the first look. On a later morning, the point, with the early alarm and the flask, then either the trail down to the bays or straight home for the pancakes. If you have only three mornings, do the point on the middle one. If it is winter and the wind is up, the veranda wins twice.

The one honest caution: from the villa you will not see the monument, and from the point you will not have the pool. Both are first light in America; only one has a bathroom.

“Great property with a super private location. The sunrises are incredible.”

Suzanne Temple, guest, March 2026

Doing it from The Cerulean

This is the villa's home ground. Point Udall is about ten minutes east, the Jack and Isaac trailhead a few minutes closer, Cramer's Park and the radio dish on the way, and Goat Hill's track a right turn past the telescope. Nothing about the outing needs a tour, a ticket or a booking; it needs an alarm, a lidded mug and shoes. If you want the morning to be more than that, the concierge can have breakfast provisions in the kitchen the night before, and a private chef from the directory can be at the stove when you walk back in.

A good East End morning, in order: alarm at 45 minutes before sunrise; coffee and a layer; the drive out with the dish pale against the sky; the platform for the gray-gold-amber run-up and the two minutes of sun; ten minutes of the west view behind you; then a decision. Walkers take the trail to Isaac Bay while it is cool and are back at the villa by ten for a swim. Everyone else is home in ten minutes for breakfast on the veranda, where the light is still coming across the reef. By mid-morning the two parties are together on the pool deck, and the rest of the day is a Buck Island boat, a drive west, or nothing.

Two logistics notes. First, the villa is gated and quiet, and leaving at 5:30 in the morning is easy; drive out slowly, because the East End roads are unlit and narrow. Second, book a hire car for the whole stay rather than relying on taxis; nothing runs to Point Udall at dawn, and nothing should. Our getting here page covers flights and cars.

The last word is the plainest one. Point Udall is the easternmost point of the United States, the country's first sunrise of every winter morning, a stone sundial built for the year 2000, and a headland at the end of a road ten minutes from the villa's gate. You will drive out there once for the fact, and you may go back for the light. Either way, the villa faces the same sun; sleep in the other mornings and let it come to you.