Places in Blue Mountain Coffee Country
The peaks, villages, gardens and parishes of Jamaica's Blue Mountains, and what each has to do with the coffee.
Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee comes from a legally defined area of the Blue Mountains, spread across the parishes of St Andrew, St Thomas and Portland. This part of the guide describes the places in and around that area: the peaks that give the range its name, the villages on the roads up from Kingston, the national park and gardens higher up, and the parishes whose slopes hold the farms.
Each entry gives the location, the elevation where sources agree on one, the place's connection to coffee, and what a visitor finds there today. For the farms and coffee works themselves, see the estates directory. For planning a trip, see visiting the Blue Mountains.
Places
- Blue and John Crow Mountains National ParkA guide to Jamaica's first national park and UNESCO World Heritage site: its Maroon heritage, biodiversity, coffee farms and management by JCDT.
- Blue Mountain Peak: Jamaica's Highest PointBlue Mountain Peak, Jamaica's highest point at 7,402 feet, rises above the coffee farms that share its name, with a demanding trail to its summit.
- Catherine's PeakCatherine's Peak, reached by trail from Newcastle in the Blue Mountains, is a popular short hike, though this guide could not verify its height or the origin of its name.
- Cinchona Botanical GardensCinchona Botanical Gardens, at about 4,900 feet in the Blue Mountains, began as an 1860s plantation for quinine-producing cinchona trees.
- Gordon TownGordon Town, a St Andrew village outside Kingston, sits on the historic road inland to Mavis Bank and the coffee-growing heart of the Blue Mountains.
- Hagley Gap and PenlyneHagley Gap and Penlyne, farming villages on the St Thomas side of the Blue Mountains, mark the usual starting point for the hike to Blue Mountain Peak.
- Holywell and Hardwar GapHolywell and Hardwar Gap are the Blue Mountains' cool, misty high point for day hikers, with cloud-forest trails close to working coffee country.
- Irish TownIrish Town, a St Andrew village on the road to Newcastle, is home to Craighton Estate, one of the best-documented Blue Mountain coffee properties.
- Newcastle: The Hill Station Above the Coffee FarmsNewcastle, a Jamaica Defense Force base since 1962, began in 1841 as a British hill station built on a coffee plantation to escape yellow fever.
- Portland: Blue Mountain Coffee on the Northern SlopesPortland's share of the Blue Mountain coffee area lies on the range's rainier, trade-wind-facing northern slopes, farmed by small growers across its mountain interior.
- St Andrew: Blue Mountain Coffee Above KingstonSt Andrew, where Jamaica's first coffee was planted in 1728, is home to Irish Town, Newcastle, Gordon Town, Mavis Bank and other Blue Mountain coffee villages above Kingston.
- St Thomas: Blue Mountain Coffee in the EastSt Thomas grows Blue Mountain coffee around Hagley Gap and the mountain country east of Mavis Bank, home to its own coffee cooperatives, factories and farming communities.
- The Buff Bay ValleyThe Buff Bay Valley carries the mountain road from Kingston over Hardwar Gap down to Portland's north coast, through a river valley of coffee farms and old towns.
- Whitfield HallWhitfield Hall, a Blue Mountains coffee farm founded in 1776, has served hikers climbing Blue Mountain Peak from its historic Great House for over a century.