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Navassa Island
A U.S. island in the Caribbean that Haiti also claims
Disputed
Navassa is a two-square-mile slab of limestone in the Caribbean Sea, about 35 miles west of Haiti, ringed by white cliffs 30 to 50 feet high. An American sea captain claimed it in 1857 under the Guano Islands Act, a law that let U.S. citizens take possession of unclaimed islands holding deposits of seabird droppings, then a prized fertilizer. Haiti has claimed the island for just as long, citing colonial treaties, and has named Navassa in its constitution since 1874.
Guano mining on Navassa was brutal work. In 1889 laborers rose up against their supervisors, five of whom were killed, and the resulting trials reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the Guano Islands Act in Jones v. United States (1890). A 162-foot lighthouse went up in 1917, and since 1999 the island has been a national wildlife refuge, closed to the public and reachable only with permission from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.