Blue and John Crow Mountains

The Blue and John Crow Mountains are a rugged, densely forested range in south-east Jamaica. The first accounts of people living in the area date from around the 10th century AD, when the Taino settled there. After the Spanish arrived at the end of the 15th century, the first Maroon groups formed among Taino resisting enslavement. From 1513 Africans were brought to Jamaica; resisting forced labour on Spanish estates, they allied with the Taino Maroons, and the two cultures merged into the Windward, or Blue Mountains, Maroons.

British rule began in 1655 and lasted until independence in 1962. The Windward Maroons' main settlement was Nanny Town, about 32 km north-east of Kingston at 600 m; excavations in the 1970s found three layers there, left by the Taino, by the Maroons from about 1655 to 1734, and by British troops in 1734 and 1735. The Maroons fought a guerrilla war rather than meeting the British head-on, and a treaty in 1739 gave them land, self-government and the right to move freely in the forests. Their network of trails, hiding places and settlements is known as the Nanny Town Heritage Route, and the mountains themselves are held sacred as the burial ground of their ancestors.

Calls to protect the mountains began with Hooper's report in 1885, and the Mountains and Rivers Reserve Act followed in 1889. In 1993 the area became Jamaica's first national park, and in 2015 it was inscribed as a mixed site for both its cultural and natural value. A high share of its lichens, mosses and some flowering plants are found nowhere else, and Maroon rites such as the Kromanti Play, traditional medicine and dances are still practised.