Virginia Barrier Islands

The Virginia Barrier Islands forming a line along the eastern coast of Delmarva.

The Virginia Barrier Islands are a continuous chain of long, thin, low-lying, sand and scrub islands separated from one another by narrow inlets and from the mainland by a series of shallow marshy bays along the entire coast of the Virginia end of the Delmarva Peninsula.^[1][2][3] The sole habitation on these islands, Broadwater, Virginia, was evacuated in 1936 following a hurricane.^[4] Because they are uninhabited they form an important ecological region, and several make up the Virginia Coast Reserve.^[5]

The Virginia Barrier Islands terminate to the south at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and are preceded to the north by Fenwick Island, a barrier spit, not a true island, spanning the Maryland and Delaware border (Transpeninsular Line). They are, in order from north to south:

• Assateague Island - the first true barrier island from the north and the longest of the barrier islands. It is divided between Maryland and Virginia and is home to a feral horse population, the Chincoteague Pony.
• Wallops Island - the base of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility.
• Assawoman Island - part of Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge
• Metompkin Island -split between the Nature Conservancy and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge
• Cedar Island - seasonally inhabited until the last private house slipped into the sea in 2014^[6]
• Parramore Island - owned by the Nature Conservancy.
• Hog Island - location of the former town of Broadwater, Virginia. Origin of the Hog Island Sheep.
• Cobb Island
• Wreck Island
• Shipshoal Island
• Myrtle Island
• Smith Island - once held by the Custis family of Virginia. Martha Custis Washington owned the island, as did her great-granddaughter, whose husband Robert E. Lee gave an account of the island after inspecting it in 1832.^[7] It hosts the Cape Charles Lighthouse.
• Fisherman Island - the last of the islands. It lies at the southern tip of the Delmarva peninsula at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and is the terminus for the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.

See also

• Barrier Islands
• Outer Banks
• Delmarva

Notes

1. Barrier Islands Center on Virginia's Eastern Shore
2. Charles McGuigan (July–August 2012). "Virginia's Barrier Islands". North of the James Magazine. Retrieved 2014-07-27.
3. Brooks M. Barnes, Barry R. Truitt, and William W. Warner, eds., Seashore Chronicles: Three Centuries of the Virginia Barrier Islands, University Press of Virginia, 1997. ISBN 0-8139-1879-0
4. Fariss Samarrai (July 2000). "Shifting sands". University of Virginia, Arts & Sciences Magazine. Retrieved 2014-07-27.
5. Connie Bond. "Shifting sands". Chesapeake Bay Magazine. Retrieved 2014-07-27.
6. http://www.bayjournal.com/article/last_cedar_island_house_slips_into_sea
7. Barry Truitt, "Robert E. Lee: An Account of His Visit to Smith Island" in Brooks M. Barnes, Barry R. Truitt, and William W. Warner, eds., Seashore Chronicles: Three Centuries of the Virginia Barrier Islands, University Press of Virginia,1997.

References

• Brooks M. Barnes, Barry R. Truitt, and William W. Warner, eds., Seashore Chronicles: Three Centuries of the Virginia Barrier Islands, University Press of Virginia, 1997. ISBN 0-8139-1879-0