Saint Croix Island
Located on the Saint Croix River in Passamaquoddy Bay, below Calais, Maine, Saint Croix Island was the site of the first French colony in Northern North America in 1604. Other than the Norse effort six centuries earlier, there is no other evidence of earlier European colonies in the New England/Canada area.
An unusually hard winter and ice stranded the French on the island and 35 of the 79 colonists died, apparently of scurvy. With the coming of spring, the settlers moved to Annapolis Royal or Port Royal in Nova Scotia across the Bay of Fundy, beginning the continuous history of European colonization of America north of Florida.