Cockpit Country

Cockpit Country is a rugged karst region of west central Jamaica spanning parts of six parishes, Trelawny, Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Ann, Manchester and northern Clarendon. Its terrain of conical hills separated by steep sided hollows, locally called cockpits, is riddled with sinkholes and shallow caves such as Marta Tick Cave and Minocal's Glory Hole, with valleys reaching as deep as 120 meters and terra rosa soils filling the basins between the hills. The Cockpit Country Forest Reserve, established in 1950, protects 221.75 square kilometers of the region's lush montane forest, and the wider area includes named valleys such as the Vale of Clarendon, eighty kilometers long, and the Queen of Spains Valley. The dense, difficult terrain has long made Cockpit Country a natural refuge, and its cockpit and sinkhole topography is considered a classic example of tropical karst.