History

St. Ann figures strongly in Jamaica's early colonial history. Italian explorer Christopher Columbus landed on the shore near Discovery Bay in 1492 while under contract from the Spanish Crown to find a shorter passage to the Far East. Within a few years, the Spanish began to inhabit the island as they systematically wiped out the native Taino population, establishing their capital at Sevilla la Nueva, or New Seville, just west of St. Ann's Bay. Later, after the British seized the island in a carefully executed attack on Santiago de la Vega, or what's now known as Spanish Town, most of the Spaniards who were determined to stay in Jamaica fled to the North Coast, where they regrouped and continued to carry out guerrilla reprisal attacks on the British with the help of Maroon loyalists. But the British had exploited a disorganization that had its roots in a lack of commitment on the part of the Spanish to develop the island as it had done in many other colonies, a neglect many scholars attribute to the absence of gold in Jamaica. The decisive battle that ended any lingering doubt about the fate of Jamaica occurred at the mouth of the Rio Nuevo, just east of present day Ocho Rios. The town was later at the center of Jamaica's slave economy and sugar boom, with vast plantations around the area. Later, Ocho Rios played an important role in the development of Jamaica's chief mineral export, bauxite, and remains an import shipment point today. When tourism grew to overtake bauxite as the country's chief earner of foreign currency, Ocho Rios was again at the center of this transformation, building the cruise ship terminal to attract the massive flows of capital that continue to play a vital role in the local economy.