52 miles (84km) E of San Juan, 18 miles (29km) E of Fajardo
A tranquil, inviting little island, Culebra lies in a mini-archipelago of 24 chunks of land, rocks, and cays, 18 miles (29km) east of Puerto Rico's main island and halfway to St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands. It's just 7 miles (11km) long and 3 miles (5km) wide and has only 2,000 residents. The landscape is dotted with everything from scrub and cacti to poincianas, frangipanis, and coconut palms.
Today vacationers and boaters can explore the island's beauties, both on land and underwater. Culebra's white-sand beaches (especially Flamenco Beach), its clear waters, and its long coral reefs invite swimmers, snorkelers, and scuba divers.
Culebra, in what was once called the Spanish Virgin Islands, was settled as a Spanish colony in 1886, but like Puerto Rico and Vieques, it became part of the United States after the Spanish-American War in 1898. In fact, Culebra's only town, a fishing village called Dewey, was named for Admiral George Dewey, a U.S. hero of that war, although the locals defiantly call it Puebla.
Both illustrious and notorious characters visited Culebra in the past. It is believed that Columbus spotted the island on his second voyage to the New World in 1493. When the Spanish started colonizing Puerto Rico, many of the Taíno Indians fled to Culebra as a last refuge. It wasn't many decades later that the swashbuckling Sir Henry Morgan and other notorious pirates used Culebra as a hideout. The island supposedly still shelters their buried loot.
From 1909 to 1975, the U.S. Navy used Culebra as a gunnery range and as a practice bomb site in World War II. Today the four tracts of the Culebra Wildlife Refuge, plus 23 other offshore islands, are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The refuge is one of the most important turtle-nesting sites in the Caribbean, and it also houses large seabird colonies, notably terns and boobies.
Culebrita, a mile-long (1.6km) coral-isle satellite of Culebra, has a hilltop lighthouse and crescent beaches.
