Just south of Ocean City, Maryland lies the 37 mile long barrier island of Assateague - a narrow, ever-changing landscape of dunes and marshes that protects the shoreline of southern Maryland and northern Virginia from the worst of the Atlantic Ocean's ravages.
Assateague and its nearby island of Chincoteague are probably best known around the world for the wild ponies that have lived there since the earliest colonial days of the 1600's. Immortalized by Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague, they remain perhaps the most enduring symbol of the islands to visitors today. Chincoteague Island is now heavily populated, but Assateague remains in large part a wild place, protected by several different agencies including the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Maryland State Parks.
Wild Pony in a Marsh
A Joint Venture
There are two entrances to Assateague Island, and neither are run by the National Park Service. In Maryland, the state park service owns a small portion of the island and manages it as Assateague State Park; visitors to the island enter via state park lands and can continue along the island road into National Park lands. The State Park offers day use areas and well over 200 closely spaced campsites complete with shower facilities. All of the state park facilities are beach oriented, with a line of dunes separating the parking and camping areas from the beach along the Atlantic Ocean. The National Park Service owns a stretch of wild lands to the north of the state park and a more developed area to the south, where it maintains two developed camping areas totaling about 100 sites, as well as a series of nature trails and beach access parking lots. From the southernmost parking lot more adventurous types can pick up their backpacks (and reservations) and hike to several primitive back-country camping areas. The NPS also allows off-road vehicle travel along the beach for quite some distance, and access on the bay side to at least three boat-in campsites.
Shoreline on the Bay Side
On the south end of the island lies Assateague National Wildlife Refuge, accessible via Chincoteague Island. There is no camping here, but the area offers an extensive drivable wildlife loop, day access to the beach, a long hiking trail along the bay side of the island, and some off-road access to the southern tip of the island.
Like the land itself, the wild horses of Assateague are divided in to two distinct herds, kept separate via a fenceline that runs along the state border (and, not coincidentally, the boundary between the National Park Service lands and the National Wildlife Refuge). The Maryland herd is maintained by the NPS, and is controlled primarily through contraception; the goal of the park service in maintaining the herd is to keep them as completely wild as possible. The ponies of the southern herd, in contrast, are owned by the Chincoteague Firefighters Association. These horses do receive some veterinary care, and their population is controlled in part by round-up and auction as made famous in the book Misty of Chincoteague.
A Chestnut Pony
In addition to wild horses, the island is home to a vast variety of other wildlife. Perhaps most interesting are the deer. The island boasts two species of deer - one native and one imported. The Sitka Deer is a stocky, very rust-brown colored deer that likes roaming under the canopy of the island's stunted trees. In contrast, the island-adapted Pygmy White-Tailed Deer like more open environments.
Sitka Fawn
Pigmy White-Tailed Deer
The National Wildlife Refuge offers excellent bird-watching along its many pools and inlets. Herons and Egrets abound along with many other marsh and shore birds.
Great Egret Hunting
Immature Black-Crowned Night Heron
A Service of Park Avenue
I hope you've enjoyed this trip through this rugged shoreline paradise. This has been a diary of the Park Avenue group, the first of the returning series on our National Parks and wild lands. For more diaries on our national parks, please visit the
Park Avenue group blog page. If you would like to contribute to this series, please send either me or the group a message using the Daily Kos message system - we'll grant you contributor access to the group and set up a schedule for the publishing of your diary.
I'd love to hear more about this park, as I only had a few hours to visit it recently, and my previous experience with it is many many years ago.
Great Egret Roosting
8:43 AM PT: Oh - and here's a map of the entire island.