The Golden Vale plantation is a well-known property in Portland located alongside the Rio Grande, Corn Husk and Back Rio Grande Rivers, four miles in the interior region behind the hills of Port Antonio. With its beautiful landscape and formidable past, the Golden Vale Estate has been the home successive generations of people including the native Tainos, the Africans.
They were enslaved during the sixteenth to the nineteenth century and compelled to labour on this estate, as well the descendants of the free Maroons of the Rio Grande Valley and Indentured East Indians that Britain brought to the island shortly after the emancipation. The plantation’s former owners include George Paplay, Alexander Kinloch, John Steel and the Boston Fruit Company. Today, there are a number of historical sites and relics that are located on Golden Vale plantation telling its story.
