Chincoteague VA
1989

https://www.virginia.org/listing/assateague-island-national-seashore/6850/

Assateague Island National Seashore, stretching 37 miles from Virginia into Maryland is one of the world's best beaches for communing with nature. Here you'll find windswept beaches, maritime forest, coastal bay waters and nature at its best on one of America's last fully functioning barrier island ecosystems.

From the little island town of Chincoteague, Virginia, a short causeway leads into the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and to its Atlantic Ocean beach at Assateague Island National Seashore. Here, you can walk along miles and miles of powdery, white sand and share the beach with descendants of the wild Chincoteague Ponies made famous by the town's saltwater cowboys and the book, "Misty of Chincoteague." The world-famous ponies live in communion with some of the world's most precious species of birds which thrive here, protected from development. The piping plover is among those protected by this nationally preserved nesting ground.

The Audubon Society has named this intact ecosystem a Global Important Bird Area for its many rare species of migratory birds. Nature is always the center attraction here, whether you're watching the sun rise or set, or listening to the whinnies of ponies or the gentle sounds of the ocean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chincoteague_Pony

The Chincoteague pony, also known as the Assateague horse, is a breed of horse that developed, and now lives, within a semi-feral or feral population on Assateague Island in the US states of Virginia and Maryland. The Chincoteague pony is one of the many breeds of feral horses in the United States. The breed was made famous by the Misty of Chincoteague novels, written by pony book author Marguerite Henry, and first published in 1947, and the pony Misty of Chincoteague.


Although popularly known as Chincoteague ponies, the feral ponies live on Assateague Island. The entire island is owned by the federal government and is split by a fence at the Maryland/Virginia state line, with a herd of around 150 ponies living on the Virginia side of the fence, and 80 on the Maryland side. The herds live on land managed by two different federal agencies with very different management strategies. Ponies from the Maryland herd (referred to in the literature of the National Park Service as Assateague horses) live within Assateague Island National Seashore. They are generally treated as wild animals, given no more or less assistance than any other species on the island, other than contraceptive treatments to curb overpopulation. Conversely, the Virginia herd (referred to as Chincoteague ponies) lives within the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, and is owned by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company. The Virginia ponies are treated to twice-yearly veterinary inspections, which prepare them for life among the general equine population if they are sold at auction. While only around 300 feral ponies live on Assateague Island, around 1,000 more live off-island, having been purchased or bred by private breeders.

Legend states that Chincoteague ponies descend from Spanish horses shipwrecked off the Virginia coast on their way to Peru in the 16th century. Another story holds that they descend from horses left on the island by pirates. Other evidence points to their ancestors actually being horses brought to the islands in the 17th century by mainland farmers. Livestock on the islands were not subject to taxes or fencing laws, and so many animals, including hogs, sheep, cattle and horses, were brought to the islands.

While the National Park Service holds to the theory that the horses were brought to the island in the 17th century, the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company, which owns the ponies on the Virginia side of Assateague, argues that the Spanish shipwreck theory is correct. They argue that horses were too valuable in the 17th century to have been left to run wild on the island, and claim that there are two sunken Spanish galleons off the Virginia coast in support of their theory. The National Chincoteague Pony Association also promotes the shipwreck theory. In 2022, a DNA study of a 500-year-old Spanish horse tooth from Puerto Real, Puerto Rico indicated that its closest genetic relative was the Chincoteague pony, supporting the theory that the ponies are descended from colonial Spanish bloodstock.