The Town on the Causeway: Chincoteague and Its Watermen
Near Chincoteague, Virginia
To reach Chincoteague, you have to cross water. The island sits in the bay behind Assateague, and for most of its history the only way on or off was by boat. Europeans began settling here in the sixteen seventies, and for two hundred years this was a working waterman's world, a place of oyster tongs, clam rakes, and flat bottomed skiffs, largely cut off from the mainland.
The town was formally incorporated in nineteen oh eight. Everything changed in the fall of nineteen twenty two, when a causeway finally opened across the marsh and shallows, linking the island to the mainland by road for the first time. It is named today the John B.
Whealton Memorial Causeway, and it is still your route in. Then, in nineteen sixty two, a bridge reached the other direction, over to Assateague and its beaches, and tourism began to bloom into the island's main business. But the waterman's heritage never left.
The island still celebrates it every year, most famously at the Chincoteague Oyster Festival held around Columbus Day weekend to mark the opening of oyster season. Walk the docks and you will still see the workboats, the crab pots, and the clam cages that have defined life on this island for generations. Chincoteague is a place shaped entirely by the water that surrounds it.
