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Chincoteague Virginia: Island of the Ponies
Chincoteague Virginia: Island of the Ponies
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Nook version of vintage magazine article originally published in 1877. Contains lots of great info and illustrations seldom seen in the last 140 years.
Read excerpt -
It was long before Chincoteague was fairly settled, and even as late as 1838 there were but twenty-six houses there; now, however, many strangers, tempted by the exceptionally good fishing and oyster-dredging of the place, are pouring in from the main-land to settle there. To mere visitors the ponies are still a great, if not the main, attraction, and during the periods of "penning" - driving them into corral—numerous guests arrive daily from the coast.
When one puts foot aboard the puffing, wheezing little steamboat "Alice," it is as though the narrow channel, across which he is ferried in about an hour, separates him from modern civilization, its rattling, dusty cars, its hurly-burly of business, its clatter and smoke of mills and factories, and lands him upon an enchanted island, cut loose from modern progress and left drifting some seventy-five years back ward in the ocean of time. No smoke of manufactories pollutes the air of Chincoteague; no hissing steam escape is heard except that of the "Alice;" no troublesome thought of politics, no religious dissension, no jealousy of other places, disturbs the minds of the Chincoteaguers, engrossed with whisky, their ponies and themselves.
Chincoteague is land-locked. Assateague Beach a narrow strip of land, composed of pine woods, salt marshes and sand flats—lies between it and the ocean, separated from it by a channel about half a mile in width. Midway upon this beach stands Assateague light-house a first-class light, and one of the finest on the coast. Between this beach or island upon the one side and the main-land on the other, in a calm sleepy bay, lies lazy Chincoteague. There is but little agriculture; the inhabit¬ants depend upon the sale of ponies and upon fishing for the necessaries of life, and mere necessaries suffice them. A little pork and bread, rank tobacco and whisky, in the proportion of Falstaff's sack, and the acme of the Chincoteaguer's happiness is attained.
Thick pine woods cover the island, in virgin growth, here and there opening into a glade of marshy flat, stretching off for a mile or more, called "the meadows," where one occasionally catches a glimpse of a herd of ponies, peacefully browsing at a distance.
Read excerpt -
It was long before Chincoteague was fairly settled, and even as late as 1838 there were but twenty-six houses there; now, however, many strangers, tempted by the exceptionally good fishing and oyster-dredging of the place, are pouring in from the main-land to settle there. To mere visitors the ponies are still a great, if not the main, attraction, and during the periods of "penning" - driving them into corral—numerous guests arrive daily from the coast.
When one puts foot aboard the puffing, wheezing little steamboat "Alice," it is as though the narrow channel, across which he is ferried in about an hour, separates him from modern civilization, its rattling, dusty cars, its hurly-burly of business, its clatter and smoke of mills and factories, and lands him upon an enchanted island, cut loose from modern progress and left drifting some seventy-five years back ward in the ocean of time. No smoke of manufactories pollutes the air of Chincoteague; no hissing steam escape is heard except that of the "Alice;" no troublesome thought of politics, no religious dissension, no jealousy of other places, disturbs the minds of the Chincoteaguers, engrossed with whisky, their ponies and themselves.
Chincoteague is land-locked. Assateague Beach a narrow strip of land, composed of pine woods, salt marshes and sand flats—lies between it and the ocean, separated from it by a channel about half a mile in width. Midway upon this beach stands Assateague light-house a first-class light, and one of the finest on the coast. Between this beach or island upon the one side and the main-land on the other, in a calm sleepy bay, lies lazy Chincoteague. There is but little agriculture; the inhabit¬ants depend upon the sale of ponies and upon fishing for the necessaries of life, and mere necessaries suffice them. A little pork and bread, rank tobacco and whisky, in the proportion of Falstaff's sack, and the acme of the Chincoteaguer's happiness is attained.
Thick pine woods cover the island, in virgin growth, here and there opening into a glade of marshy flat, stretching off for a mile or more, called "the meadows," where one occasionally catches a glimpse of a herd of ponies, peacefully browsing at a distance.
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