Chincoteague, Virginia

Chincoteague is a town in Accomack County, Virginia, population over 5,000 residents. The town is perhaps best known for its feral ponies (a breed that breed has come to be called "Chincoteague Ponies"), although these are not actually on the island of Chincoteague but on the nearby Assateague Island. The median income for a household in the town is estimated at $28,514, and the median income for a family at $33,425.

A famous book by Marguerite Henry, Misty of Chincoteague, is about Chincoteague's annual Pony Penning Day. The book's story was made into the 1961 film Misty, which was filmed on-location at Chincoteague, and has become a favorite family film. On Pony Penning Day (which takes place on the last consecutive Wednesday and Thursday in July and has been held since 1925), horses swim across the shallow water between Chincoteague and Assateague islands. If any animal is too small or weak to make the swim, they are placed on a barge and ferried over. All the horses are herded into large pens after running through the middle of town and down Main Street.

The actual swim occurs on a Wednesday, and the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department auctions off that year's foals on Thursday, while on Friday the remaining ponies swim back to Assateague. Legend has it that the ponies on Assateague are descendants of survivors of a Spanish galleon that sank on its way to Mexico during a storm off the coast of the island.

In 1962, a major Nor'easter winter storm, the Ash Wednesday Storm, struck Chincoteague and Assateague Islands where almost all structures were destroyed. Possibly due to the publicity from the Misty books and movie and the damage from the 1962 storm, most of Assateague Island has been preserved from development as Assateague Island National Seashore since 1965.