On that date, Captain Sawle of the American ship Palmyra was wrecked on the atoll. Palmyra was first sighted in 1798 by American sea captain, Edmund Fanning of Stonington, Connecticut, while his ship the Betsy was in transit to Asia, but it was only later-on November 7, 1802-that the first western people landed on the uninhabited atoll. There is a ~2000 m long, unpaved and unimproved airstrip. Many roads and causeways were built during World War II but are now unserviceable and overgrown. There is no current economic activity on the island.
Defense is the responsibility of the United States. The surrounding waters, out to the 12 mile limit, were transferred to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service, and designated as the Palmyra Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in 2001. by the Office of Insular Affairs, United States Department of the Interior. It is privately owned by The Nature Conservancy and managed as a nature reserve, but administered from Washington D.C. It is therefore currently the only unorganized, incorporated U.S. It is also an unorganized territory as there is no Congressional act specifying how it should be governed, which is now a moot point as there is now no indigenous population nor any reason to think that there will be one in the future. Palmyra is an incorporated territory of the United States, meaning that it is subject to all provisions contained in the United States Constitution and is permanently under U.S. The northern arch of islets is formed by Strawn Island, Cooper Island, Aviation Island, Quail Island, Whippoorwill Island, followed in the East by Eastern Island, Papala Island, and Pelican Island, and in the South by Bird Island, Holei Island, Engineer island, Marine Island, Kaula Island, Paradise Island and Home Island (clockwise). The largest island is Cooper Island in the North, followed by Kaula Island in the South. Exceptions are Sand Island in the West and Barren Island in the East. Most islets are not separate, but connected. It consists of an extensive reef, two shallow lagoons, and some 50 sand and reef-rock islets and bars covered with vegetation-mostly coconut trees, Scaevola, and tall Pisonia trees. Its 14.5 km of coastline has one anchorage known as West Lagoon. Palmyra is one of the Northern Line Islands (southeast of Kingman Reef and north of Kiribati Line Islands), located almost due south of the Hawaiian Islands, roughly halfway between Hawai‘i and American Samoa. Palmyra Atoll is an uninhabited, 12 km 2 atoll in the Northern Pacific Ocean at Template:Coor dm. Palmyra Atoll - NASA NLT Landsat 7 (Visible Color) Satellite Image