Chincoteague Pony Penning

Chincoteague Pony Penning, held the last Wednesday and Thursday of July, centers on the Wild Pony Swim, in which volunteer Saltwater Cowboys herd wild ponies across Assateague Channel from Assateague Island to Chincoteague Island. Run by the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department since 1925 to fund firefighting equipment, the event includes a pony auction and carnival, with roots in island traditions dating back centuries.

Chincoteague Pony Penning's roots reach back to the seventeenth century, when island residents on Virginia's Eastern Shore developed the informal practice of rounding up, or 'penning,' feral ponies believed to have roamed Assateague Island for generations, according to island tradition, descendants of horses that survived a colonial-era shipwreck, though historians note more mundane explanations involving mainland livestock grazing on the barrier island are equally plausible.