A small, eroding island in the Gambia River holds the ruins of James Fort, once the largest English slave-trading post on the river and, through Alex Haley’s Roots, the place from which Kunta Kinteh was taken into slavery. Few sites tie a physical ruin so directly to a single remembered life.
At a glance
Kunta Kinteh Island, known until 2011 as James Island, sits in the middle of the Gambia River roughly 30 km from the Atlantic. It is a sliver of land, never more than 400 metres long, and its shoreline is being worn away by the river. What survives are the broken walls and bastions of James Fort, once the largest English trading fort on the Gambia River and, for more than 150 years, a processing point for enslaved Africans before the Atlantic crossing.
The island is inseparable from Alex Haley’s 1976 book Roots, which traced his ancestry to Kunta Kinteh, a young Mandinka man from the nearby village of Juffureh who was captured in 1767 and sold into slavery at the fort. The book and the television series that followed it turned the island and Juffureh into places of pilgrimage, particularly for African-American visitors tracing family history.
Key facts
- Original construction: built as Fort Jacob in 1651 by the Duke of Courland, a small Baltic duchy now part of Latvia.
- English takeover: seized by the English in 1661 and rebuilt as James Fort, named after the Duke of York.
- Repeated destruction: burned by the French in 1695, 1702 and 1779 during the Anglo-French wars, and rebuilt by the British each time.
- Slave trade role: used as a holding and processing post for enslaved people brought down the Gambia River for over 150 years.
- Name change: renamed Kunta Kinteh Island in 2011 in honour of the figure at the centre of Alex Haley’s Roots.
- World Heritage status: inscribed by UNESCO in 2003 as Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites.
History
The Gambia River was one of the principal slave-trading routes in West Africa through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Enslaved people held at James Fort had been brought from the interior, from areas now within Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Guinea and Mali, and were largely Mandinka, Wolof and Fula people captured in conflict or seized from their villages. For many, the crossing to the island marked the last point on African soil before being loaded onto ships bound for Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, Barbados or Jamaica.
The fort’s origins are unusual: it began in 1651 as a Courland outpost, part of an ambitious and short-lived attempt by a small Baltic duchy to build overseas colonies. That colony lasted only a decade before the English took the island in 1661, after which it changed hands repeatedly during the Anglo-French wars, being destroyed and rebuilt several times before falling into the ruin visible today.
What you see
Visits typically combine a stop at Juffureh village with the crossing to the island itself. Juffureh holds a small museum dedicated to Kunta Kinteh and Alex Haley, and living descendants of the Kinteh family receive visitors, with a local griot recounting the family’s history in the Mandinka oral tradition.
The short boat crossing to the island brings visitors to the fort’s ruined bastions and cannon emplacements, now set with interpretation panels. The whole island is protected as an archaeological site, and its walls continue to erode into the river that once carried thousands of enslaved people past its shores.
Practical information
- Access: the island is reached by boat from Banjul, with the crossing including a stop at Juffureh village before the short passage to the island itself.
- Booking: tours are arranged through the Gambia Tourism Board or operators based in the Senegambia tourist area; current pricing and schedules are best confirmed directly with them.
- Best time to visit: the dry season, from November to April, offers calmer river conditions; the Roots Homecoming Festival, an annual celebration linked to the site, takes place in late April or early May.
Getting there
Banjul International Airport is the usual entry point for Gambia. From Banjul, boats run upstream to Juffureh and Kunta Kinteh Island, with the tour typically combining the village visit with the crossing to the fort ruins. Onward booking is best done through the Gambia Tourism Board or tour operators in the Senegambia area near Banjul.
Nearby
- Abuko Nature Reserve — around 20 km from Banjul, one of Gambia’s most accessible wildlife reserves, known for its birdlife, red colobus monkeys and crocodile pool.
- Stone Circles of Senegambia — about 200 km east, a UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed in 2006, comprising over a thousand megalithic stone circles across Gambia and Senegal, with the Wassu circles among the most accessible.
Sources
- Wikipedia, Kunta Kinteh Island
- Wikipedia, Roots (Haley novel)
- Wikipedia, Courland colonization
- UNESCO, Kunta Kinteh Island and Related Sites, WHS reference 1097
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