United States
Assateague Island
Wild ponies wade through salt marshes on a barrier island thirty-seven miles long.
A stallion stands chest-deep in the cord grass, unbothered, while the Atlantic rolls onto an undeveloped beach behind him. Assateague runs thirty-seven miles along the Maryland and Virginia shore, a ribbon of sand where the only permanent residents are wild horses, sika deer and nesting shorebirds.
Assateague's horses are most plausibly the descendants of livestock that mainland owners turned loose on the island in the late seventeenth century to dodge fencing laws and taxes, and they have run wild ever since. They move in bands of two to a dozen animals, each band holding its own range, drifting through campsites and dunes with no fences or handlers; rangers ask only that you give them the space they need to stay wild. The island splits at the state line: the National Park Service manages the Maryland herd, while Virginia's is owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company and capped at roughly 150 adults under federal permit. On the Maryland side you can camp behind the dunes with the ocean on one side and the salt marsh on the other, and there is not a traffic light or shop on the entire island.
Family
Children watch truly wild horses graze past the tent, no fences and no feeding times; the rule of the visit is simple and worth teaching, which is to give the bands their space.
Couple
Thirty-seven miles of undeveloped beach stretch far beyond the busiest access points, and a driftwood fire behind the dunes with horses somewhere in the dark is its very own kind of evening.
- The horses are wild descendants of seventeenth-century livestock, moving in bands of two to twelve that wander freely through the campsites and dunes.
- Thirty-seven miles of barrier island hold no permanent residents, no shops and no traffic lights; a bridge serves the Maryland end and the Virginia end is reached through Chincoteague.
- Oceanside camping puts your tent directly behind the dunes, the Atlantic on one side and the salt marsh on the other.
- Virginia's herd is owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company and held to roughly 150 adult animals under a federal refuge permit.
Blue crabs steamed under Old Bay at a waterside crab house, picked by hand until the table is a ruin of shell.
Chincoteague salt oysters, farmed in the briny channels beside Assateague since the 1860s and famous for tasting like the sea itself.
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