Assateague Island

Protected since 1965, Assateague Island is celebrated for its populations of wild horses — known as Chincoteague ponies — whose exact origin is unknown, though local legend holds that they descend from survivors of a 17th-century Spanish shipwreck; the more likely historical explanation, and the less romantic one, is that they were left to graze on the island by colonial settlers to avoid livestock taxes on the mainland. Two separate herds, one in Maryland and one in Virginia, are genetically isolated by a fence on the state line and are managed under different population control methods.