St. Martin / St. Maarten is a tropical island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately 150 miles east of Puerto Rico. The 88 km² (38 square-mile) island is divided roughly in half between France and the Netherlands; it is the smallest inhabited land mass in the world that is divided between two nations (with the possible exception of a small island in Boundary Lake, between the U.S. and Canada and about twenty other islands around the world). The southern Dutch half is called Sint Maarten and is part of the Netherlands Antilles; the northern French half is called Saint-Martin and is part of the French overseas région and département of Guadeloupe. Collectively, the two territories are known as, "St.-Martin/St. Maarten", "St. Martins", or simply, "SXM" (SXM is the IATA identifier for Princess Juliana International Airport, the island's main airport). Remarkably, neither of the two halves of Saint Martin warrants a separate FIPS PUB 10-4 territory code; they are presumably coded as GP (Guadeloupe) and NT (Netherlands Antilles).

The main towns are Marigot (French side) and Philipsburg (Dutch side).

The French part of the island has a land area of 53.20 km² (20.5 sq mi). At the October 2004 supplementary French census, the population in the French part of the island was 33,102 inhabitants (up from only 8,072 inhabitants at the 1982 census, a quadrupling in just 20 years), which means a population density of 622 inh. per km² in 2004.

Sint Maarten, the Dutch part of the island, has a land area of 34 km² (13.1 sq mi). At the 2001 Netherlands Antilles census, the population in Sint Maarten was 30,594 inhabitants, which means a population density of 900 inh. per km². In 2004 the population of Sint Maarten was estimated at 33,119 inhabitants.

Source: Wikipedia