It is located approximately in the middle of the South Atlantic being 900 miles west of Africa and 1,000 miles east of Brazil. The nearest land is the island of St Helena 700 miles to the southeast. The peak was used to support a farm and provided fresh food for the island in the past. There were also several water springs that, until a few years ago, were the sole source of the island's water until the power station desalination unit was built. Ascension is a pretty desolate, but intriguingly beautiful, place with many of the lower plains looking like the surface of Mars covered as they are in ash and rocks as if they had been spewed from a volcano only yesterday.
Ascension is an unusual place as it is essentially a working island.
There are no real indigenous residents as such and all the occupants are really contractors working on the island for short periods. Nobody owns property either, but the way the island is run is due to be fundamentally reviewed next year I understand. The only way to get to the island is to fly using an RAF Trident from Brize Norton in the UK or catch the HMS St Helena that connects the island to St. Helena on a monthly basis. Politically, Ascension has been a protectorate of St. Helena since 1922 along with Tristan da Cunha. Ascension is a very young island only a few million years old with eruptions taking place as recently as 500 years ago.