Saint Elizabeth Parish

Saint Elizabeth (Jamaican Patois: Sint Elizabet) is one of Jamaica's largest parishes. It is located in the southwest of the island, in the county of Cornwall. Its capital, Black River, is located at the mouth of the Black River, the widest on the island.

Saint Elizabeth originally included most of the southwest part of the island, but Westmoreland was taken from it in 1703, and in 1814 a part of Manchester. The resulting areas were named after the wife of Sir Thomas Modyford, the first English Governor of Jamaica.

There are archeological traces of Taíno/Arawak existence in the parish, as well as of 17th-century colonial Spanish settlements. After 1655, when the English settled on the island, they concentrated on developing large sugar cane plantations with enslaved African workers. Today, buildings with 'Spanish wall' construction (masonry of limestone sand and stone between wooden frames) can still be seen in some areas.

St Elizabeth became a prosperous parish, and Black River an important seaport. In addition to shipping sugar and molasses, Black River became the centre of the logging trade. Large quantities of logwood were exported to Europe to make a blue dye very like Prussian blue, which was popular in the 18th and 19th centuries.^{[citation needed]}

St Elizabeth was the first parish to have electric power, where it was first introduced in a house called Waterloo in Black River in 1893.

The parish is located at latitude 18°15'N, and longitude 77°56'W; to the west of Manchester, to the east of Westmoreland, and to the south of St. James and Trelawny. It covers an area of 1,212.4 km², making it Jamaica's second-largest parish, smaller only than Saint Ann's 1,212.6 km². The parish is divided into four electoral districts (constituencies), that is North-East, North-West, South-East and South-West.

The northern and northeastern parts of the parish are mountainous. There are three mountain ranges —the Nassau Mountains to the north-east, the Lacovia Mountains to the west of the Nassau Mountains, and the Santa Cruz Mountains which, running south, divide the wide plain to end in a precipitous drop of 1,600 feet (490 m) at Lovers' Leap. The central and southern sections form an extensive plain divided by the Santa Cruz Mountains. A large part of the lowlands is covered by morass, but it still provides grazing land for horses and mules.

The main river in the parish is the Black River, and measuring 53.4 kilometres (33.2 mi), it is one of the longest rivers in Jamaica. It is navigable for about 40 kilometres (25 mi), and is supported by many tributaries including Y.S., Broad, Grass and Horse Savannah. The river has its source in the mountains of Manchester where it rises and flows west as the border between Manchester and Trelawny then goes underground. It reappears briefly in several surrounding towns, but reemerges near Balaclava and tumbles down gorges to the plain known as the Savannah, through the Great Morass and to the sea at Black River, the capital of the parish.