The Pony Swim: Saltwater Cowboys and a Fire Company's Herd
Near Chincoteague, Virginia
On the last Wednesday of July, tens of thousands of people crowd the marshes along the Assateague Channel to watch wild ponies swim. It is one of the oldest and strangest traditions in America, and it belongs to a volunteer fire department. Here is how it began.
In the early nineteen twenties, fires twice tore through downtown Chincoteague. A group of about twenty five men formed the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, and they needed money for equipment. The island already had a rough tradition of penning the wild ponies that roamed Assateague, so in nineteen twenty five the firemen made it official.
They would drive the herd across the channel at slack tide, when the current goes still, and auction the foals to raise money and to keep the herd from outgrowing its island. It worked. The first swim drew roughly fifteen thousand onlookers.
Within a couple of years the crowds had doubled. Today the Pony Swim draws forty to fifty thousand people, and the one hundredth anniversary swim in twenty twenty five drew about fifty thousand. The riders who herd the ponies are called saltwater cowboys, and there are dozens of them.
They gather the animals on the Virginia end of Assateague Island, wait for slack water, and send them across. The crossing itself is short, only about three to five minutes of swimming. The first foal to touch the Chincoteague shore is crowned King or Queen Neptune and raffled off to a lucky ticket holder.
The next day, most of the year's foals are sold at auction on the carnival grounds. The money keeps the fire company running, and just as important, it caps the herd. The Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company owns these ponies, and it buys a grazing permit from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service that limits the herd to roughly one hundred fifty adults, so the fragile refuge is not overgrazed.
Some foals are sold as buybacks, where the winning bidder pays but donates the animal back so it can return to the island and keep the bloodline going. It is a spectacle, a fundraiser, and a working conservation tool, all at once.
