The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the Solomon Islands. They lie approximately 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast of the Solomon Islands Chain. The Santa Cruz Islands lie just north of the archipelago of Vanuatu, and are considered part of the Vanuatu rain forests ecoregion.
The largest island is Nendo, which is also known as Santa Cruz Island proper (505.5 km², highest point 549 m (1,801 ft), population over 5000). Lata, located on Nendo, is the largest town, and the capital of Temotu province.
Other islands belonging to the Santa Cruz group are Vanikoro (173.2 km², population 800, which is actually two islands, Banie and its small neighbor Teanu) and Utupua (69.0 km², highest point 380 m (1,247 ft), population 848).
The Santa Cruz Islands are less than five million years old, and were pushed upward by the tectonic subduction of the northward-moving Indo-Australian Plate under the Pacific Plate. The islands are mostly composed of limestone and volcanic ash over limestone. The highest point in the Santa Cruz Islands is on Vanikoro, 924 m (3,031 ft).
The term Santa Cruz Islands is sometimes used to encompass all of the islands of the present-day Solomon Islands province of Temotu.
The native languages of the islands are classified as the Reef Islands – Santa Cruz languages, within the Oceanic subgroup of the Austronesian language family.
The islands were visited by Spanish explorer Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, the first European to sight them, on his second Pacific expedition in 1595. Mendaña died on the island of Nendo, which he had named Santa Cruz, in 1596.
During World War II, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was fought north of the Santa Cruz group and some sea planes were based in Graciosa Bay, with one reportedly having sunken there. Chemical ordnance stored on Vanikoro Island was not completely removed until the 1990s.
Famous quotes containing the words santa and/or islands:
“On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe.”
—Johnny Mercer (1909–1976)
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. It was a phase of this problem that caused the Civil War.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)