The Wild Ponies of Assateague
Near Ocean City, Maryland
Just south of Ocean City, across the inlet, lies Assateague Island, and on it roam bands of wild ponies. Shaggy, short, and utterly unbothered by tourists, they are one of the great sights of the mid Atlantic coast. How they got there is genuinely disputed.
One beloved legend says they descend from horses that swam ashore from a wrecked Spanish galleon. The National Park Service leans toward a plainer answer, that colonial farmers turned livestock loose on the island to graze, dodging fences and the taxes that came with fenced mainland pasture. A fence at the Maryland Virginia state line splits the herd in two.
On the Maryland side, the Park Service manages a small herd, with a contraceptive program since nineteen ninety-four. On the Virginia side, roughly one hundred fifty are managed by a volunteer fire company. Every July, riders on the Virginia end swim their herd across a channel to Chincoteague Island in a tradition called Pony Penning, drawing large crowds of spectators.
The novel Misty of Chincoteague made these ponies famous worldwide. Watch them from a respectful distance. They bite, they kick, and they are entirely wild.
