Assateague Island
Assateague Island is a 37-mile-long barrier island located off the coasts of Maryland and Virginia, known for its stunning natural beauty and diverse wildlife. It serves as a wildlife sanctuary, attracting over two million visitors annually who come to enjoy its pristine beaches for swimming, sunbathing, and outdoor activities like hiking, biking, and camping. The island is particularly famous for its feral horses, believed to be descendants of domesticated horses brought by settlers in the 17th century. The Assateague National Seashore encompasses much of the island, alongside the Assateague State Park and the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, which offer additional recreational opportunities and habitat for migratory birds.
The island's rich history includes significant transformations, such as its separation from Fenwick Island due to a hurricane in 1933, which led to its development as a tourist destination. While accommodations are unavailable on the island itself, visitors can partake in unique experiences, including witnessing the annual Pony Swim, where local volunteers round up and swim the horses across the Assateague Channel. The horses have adapted to the island's harsh environment and are an integral part of the local culture and ecology. For those looking to explore a blend of natural beauty, wildlife, and history, Assateague Island presents a captivating destination.
Assateague Island
Assateague Island is a 37-mile barrier island in both Maryland and Virginia. The entire island is a wildlife sanctuary and enjoyed by tourists, who may swim and sunbathe on the island’s pristine undeveloped beach. Assateague Island is famous for the wild horses that have roamed freely there for hundreds of years. The Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge lies at the southern end of Assateague Island, near Chincoteague Island. Only a short drive from Ocean City, Maryland, Assateague Island welcomes more then two million visitors each year. Because the area is protected, no accommodations are available on or near the beach.
Background
At one time, Assateague Island was not an island, but was instead just land that was connected to Fenwick Island in Delaware. In 1933 a massive hurricane tore through the area and created the Ocean City Inlet between Fenwick and Assateague Islands. The inlet was convenient, as it created a shipping canal between Ocean City and Assateague Island. It was fortified to keep it open.
Prior to the hurricane, only small communities were on what would become Assateague Island. The largest of these was Assateague Village, which was beneath the Assateague Lighthouse. Most of the people in the area earned their living harvesting clams and oysters or working for the US Lifesaving Services.
In the 1950s, a group of investors wanted to create a development on Assateague Island called Ocean Beach. They built a main road and marked plots for homes. Another company, Atlantic Ocean Estates, also planned to develop land on the northern portion of the island for new homes. Atlantic Ocean Estates pointed out the need for a bridge connecting Assateague Island and the Delmarva Peninsula. The state of Maryland built the bridge, which cost $1.5 million.
In the early 1960s, plans were made to develop more of Assateague Island. More than five thousand plots of land were sold on the island; however, only about thirty were ever built because of the Great March Storm of 1962, which had 60-mile-per-hour winds and 25-foot waves that nearly destroyed Ocean City, Maryland. Assateague Island, a slender piece of land, became completely submerged in water from storm surges, halting any plans for further development.
To recoup some of the money they had invested, private landowners sold their land plots to the US government. By 1982, the federal government owned nearly all the land on the barrier island. Part of this land became Assateague Island in Maryland and part became the Chincoteague Island in Virginia. On Chincoteague Island is the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge, which had been established in 1943 as a habitat for migratory birds, in particular snow geese. More than 500 acres in Maryland became Assateague State Park.
In the twenty-first century, most of the land on the barrier island is called Assateague Island National Seashore, but the Assateague State Park and the Chincoteague Wildlife Refuge still exist. Assateague serves as public land where people come to walk on the beach, swim, surf, and camp. The entire barrier island is owned by the National Park Service, Maryland State Parks, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
Overview
The more than two million annual visitors to Assateague Island National Seashore enjoy an array of activities. The 37-mile-long beach is one of the most beautiful along the Atlantic Coast. Tourists may ride over-sand-vehicles (OSV) in certain zones of the beach with the purchase of a permit. Horseback riding is also permitted in these zones. Open campfires are allowed on some parts of the beach with a permit.
Visitors of the area can take boat tours from Chincoteague Island to explore Assateague Island’s bays and marshes. They can also hike and bike on the island’s many trails or go on a boat tour of the area. More than three hundred camp sites are in the Assateague State Park.
The Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge is visited by more than one million people each year who enjoy traversing on the beach and exploring saltwater and freshwater marshes and the maritime forest. Visitors often get to see flocks of migratory birds such as herons, egrets, falcons, plovers, and ducks.
The Assateague Lighthouse is also a popular tourist attraction that was built in 1867 to prevent the many shipwrecks that were occurring in the area at the time. The lighthouse sits on a natural bluff that is 22 feet above sea level. The lighthouse first had an oil-burning fixed Fresnel lens that enabled the lighthouse keeper to see 18 miles offshore. However, this light was replaced in 1961 by a rotating beacon. Visitors in search of a physical challenge can climb the 175 cast-iron steps to the top of the 142-foot structure.
Feral Horses
The wild horses on Assateague Island are a major tourist attraction. Visitors can watch them graze in marshes, walk along roadways, and frolic on beaches. The horses are feral, meaning that they descended from domesticated horses but have since reverted to a wild state. Historians are not sure how the first horses came to be on the island. According to local folklore, they survived a shipwreck off the coast of Virginia and swam to shore. However, historians believe that it is more likely that settlers brought horses to the island in the seventeenth century, and those horses are the ancestors of the wild horses, which have been there since 1665. At that time, ten horses were on Assateague Island. Three years later, their population had increased to twenty-eight. Scientists began studying the horses in 1975 and have since surveyed them six times a year by vehicle and on foot. During a survey, the scientists complete a sight record that identifies each horse by sex, color, markings, and scars. They enter the information they have collected into a database that helps them track the horses’ age and health. Scientists take measures to stabilize the herds using contraception delivered via dart gun, so the horses do not have to be captured.
The horses on Assateague Island are split into two main herds, with one herd in Maryland and the other in Virginia. A fence along the Maryland/Virginia border separates the herds. Each herd has divided itself into bands, or groups, ranging in size from two to ten horses. Scientists try to limit the size of the herds to about 150 horses each. The National Park Service manages the Maryland herd, and the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company manages the Virginia herd.
The wild horses on Assateague Island have adapted to their harsh environment. Each year, they face scorching heat, hungry mosquitoes, and dangerous storms. The vegetation on the island offers them only a poor-quality diet. The horses eat mainly salt marsh plants and brush. The wild horses on Assateague Island are smaller than other horses and have a rounded belly, which is why they are sometimes called ponies. These traits are the result of their low-nutrient diet. In terms of color, most of the horses are solid brown or pinto-patterned. The variation in color is the result of the periodic introduction of horses from other blood lines to avoid excessive inbreeding.
Visitors are prohibited from touching or feeding the horses on Assateague Island. If they do, they are at risk of being bitten or kicked. Island officials point out that feeding the horses on roadways puts them at risk of being hit by cars.
Pony Swim
Chincoteague raises money to help care for and control the population of horses (called ponies) by holding a special event called the Pony Swim. Members of the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department, known as Saltwater Cowboys, oversee the annual event. Being chosen to be a Saltwater Cowboy is considered a great honor. Members of this group care for the ponies by performing year-round checkups and giving them vaccinations.
On a Wednesday during the summer, the Saltwater Cowboys round up the ponies on the island and put them into corrals. Sick, elderly, and pregnant ponies along with very young foals are released back onto the island. At a time when the tide is slack, the ponies swim across the Assateague Channel. About forty thousand spectators watch the event. Once the ponies make it safely across the channel, they are checked by a veterinarian and taken to the Volunteer Fire Department Fairgrounds, where about sixty foals are auctioned off. The money raised goes to local charities. Some of the foals are purchased under buy-back conditions. This means that the person who buys them donates the money but allows the pony to be returned to the island. After the event, the ponies swim back across the channel to the island.
Bibliography
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