Bulletin of the ISPAN, No. 16: The Môle Saint-Nicolas and Its Military Heritage
Summary: The military heritage of a region whose strategic value came from its geography: the peninsula enclosing the deep bay works as a giant and effective breakwater, and the thin strip of land behind it is the region's only fertile reserve. Columbus entered the bay on 6 December 1492, Saint Nicholas's day, and named it.
Key Findings
- The bulletin presents Mole Saint-Nicolas as a military landscape whose value came from a deep protected bay at Haiti's northwest tip.
- It traces the site's naming to Columbus's first voyage and describes the bay as a strategic Caribbean access point compared to Gibraltar.
- The article explains why Spanish and early French settlement remained limited despite the harbor, because the surrounding environment was arid and difficult for agriculture.
- It recounts failed settlement attempts by Acadians and Germans before the site became a central concern of colonial defense.
- The issue also reports legal delimitation of the Citadelle, Sans-Souci, Ramiers National Historical Park, filling a long-standing protection and management gap.
- The decree required boundary markers, protected state-domain lands from lease, restricted agriculture, livestock and construction on those lands, and made interior park projects subject to ISPAN authorization.
Full Description
The military heritage of a region whose strategic value came from its geography: the peninsula enclosing the deep bay works as a giant and effective breakwater, and the thin strip of land behind it is the region's only fertile reserve. Columbus entered the bay on 6 December 1492, Saint Nicholas's day, and named it. One issue of the Bulletin de l'ISPAN, the monthly bulletin of Haiti's Institut de Sauvegarde du Patrimoine National, which ran from June 2009 to at least November 2011 and documented one monument, site or historic center per issue.
How to cite
Institute for the Protection of National Heritage (ISPAN), 2010, Bulletin of the ISPAN, No. 16: The Môle Saint-Nicolas and Its Military Heritage, https://www.haiti.org/