Chincoteague Island spends most of its year as a quiet Eastern Shore resort where the favorite pastimes are boating, fishing, crabbing, and shopping along Main Street. During the last week of July, however, it becomes a living memorial to a spotted gold-and-white pony named Misty.
Misty of Chincoteague was the equine star who in 1947 became the subject of Marguerite Henri's classic novel "Misty of Chincoteague," and put the annual Chincoteague Pony Swim on the radar of horse lovers from across America. The Pony Swim and Auction had been going on since 1925, as part of the Firemen’s Carnival and an annual fund-raising event for the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department.
During the Tuesday of the last week of July, for nearly 90 years, a collection of mounted Islanders, who in their other lives are ordinary merchants, businessmen, firemen, and artists assume their alter-egos as the Saltwater Cowboys and head for the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on Assateague Island, where the ponies live the rest of the year.
The Saltwater Cowboys spend hours searching the thickets, marshes, and woods of Assateague for bands of ponies, swatting flies, mosquitoes, and no-see-ums as they go. The ponies are collected in a holding pen, where they remain overnight until the tide in the Chincoteague Channel is low enough for them to make their swim.
It may not compete with the Kentucky Derby’s title as the “most exciting two minutes in sport.” But the approximately six minutes it takes for the ponies to navigate the channel is exciting enough that thousands of people will line the channel for between five and six hours in the heat of a Chincoteague Island July for a glimpse of the goings-on!
One thing which has changed over the years is that many people eager to view the swimming ponies now rent seats on Pony Swim Charter Excursions. Others have figured out that what swims from Assateague to Chincoteague must swim back, and simply wait for until the day after the Pony Auction, when most of the tourists have departed, to watch the return swim!
The days when people would arrive at the Pony Swim to buy foals without having given any thought to how they would transport their feisty little purchases home are thankfully over. But the Festival fanfare surrounding the Pony Swim has changed little over the years.
The amusement rides have much more sophisticated technology and the stage entertainment might be louder. But the country western music is still the same, and so are the little girls who come with dreams of leaving with a Chincoteague pony of their own!
