A volcanic mid-Atlantic outpost where green turtles outnumber tourists — one of Earth's most isolated inhabited islands
Ascension Island sits alone in the South Atlantic, a bare volcanic peak 1,600km from Africa and 2,250km from South America with no indigenous population and no tourist infrastructure worth speaking of. What it does have is spectacular: the green turtle rookery on Long Beach is one of the most important in the Atlantic, with hundreds of females nesting between January and June; the central peak of Green Mountain at 859m collects cloud and supports a unique endemic biome that Darwin's botanist Joseph Hooker helped create by deliberate reforestation in the 1840s. The island's military and intell…
Ascension was discovered uninhabited by Portuguese navigator João da Nova on Ascension Day 1503 and remained uninhabited until Napoleon's exile to nearby Saint Helena in 1815 prompted the British to garrison it as a precaution. The island served as a Royal Navy victualling station, a communications hub (the first transatlantic telegraph cable terminated here in 1899), and a critical mid-Atlantic staging point for both World Wars and the 1982 Falklands War. Its strategic position — midway between Europe/Africa and the Americas — has kept it a British Overseas Territory with an American air bas…