Point Fortin sits on the far southwestern tip of Trinidad, about as far from Port of Spain as you can get without getting wet. It's a working town with a big personality — oil workers, fishing boats, steelbands, and some of the most beautiful coastline on the island. Everything here was built by oil. And when oil left, the town rebuilt itself anyway.
Published by LocalAxys Editorial Team ·
Point Fortin sits on the far southwestern tip of Trinidad, about as far from Port of Spain as you can get without getting wet. It's a working town with a big personality — oil workers, fishing boats, steelbands, and some of the most beautiful coastline on the island. Everything here was built by oil. And when oil left, the town rebuilt itself anyway.
Three estates and a steamer
At the start of the 1900s, Point Fortin was barely a place at all — three cocoa and coconut estates, a handful of people, and no road in or out. You got there by coastal steamer or you didn't get there.
Oil changes everything
Petroleum was found in the area in 1906, and in 1907 Trinidad Oilfields sank its first well on the La Fortunee Estate. That well changed the map. The company grew into United British Oilfields, then Shell Trinidad — and in 1974 the state took it over as TRINTOC, the Trinidad and Tobago Oil Company, now Petrotrin.
In 1931 the town's population was under 500. From the 1940s to the 1980s, oil money poured through Point Fortin: the engineers lived here, the workers drank here, the town grew around the industry. When the boom ended in the 1980s and the refinery closed, the town took the hit hard.
In 1980 Point Fortin became a borough — the first Republic Borough in Trinidad and Tobago's history. Small in size (the smallest borough in the country), but the title mattered: a town recognized for what it had built.
Gas: the second boom
In 1995 Atlantic LNG was incorporated to build a liquefied natural gas plant at Point Fortin. Train 1 started commercial operation on March 13, 1999, and the first shipment sailed on May 1, 1999 — bound for Boston, the first LNG ever shipped from the Atlantic Basin. Three more trains followed, and the plant turned the borough's economy around. Drive past it at night and you'll see it lit up like a small city — the new industry on the same ground where the oil wells started it all.
The steelpan argument
Point Fortin has a strong local claim as a birthplace of the steelpan: the story goes that in the 1930s, pan was being played in Fanny Village and on the beaches — the oil settlement had no shortage of discarded steel drums. Historians treat it as a competing origin story rather than settled fact, but the town's pan tradition is real either way. The Borough Day celebrations are headlined by Pan on the Move, a steelband road festival with bands playing from trucks through the streets, drawing tens of thousands every year around late April and early May.
The town is also a stronghold of the Spiritual Baptist faith, and it raised calypso royalty: Superblue, the Mighty Duke, and Fay-Ann Lyons all grew up here, along with footballers like Kenwyne Jones.
What to see
Clifton Hill Beach — the family beach: low waves, food spots, bars, and the "I Love Clifton Hill" sign.
Vessigny Beach — wilder, west of town, for the adventurous.
Los Iros — on the south coast, known more for fishing than swimming.
Pan on the Move — Borough Day season (late April/early May). The town at full volume.
La Brea Pitch Lake — nearby, a short drive, and worth the detour.
Point Fortin is the deep south: proud, direct, and welcoming in a way only the far end of the island can manage. The oil built it. The gas rebuilt it. The people never left.