The Virginia Barrier Islands are a continuous chain of long, thin, low-lying, sand and scrub barrier islands separated from one another by narrow inlets and from the mainland by a series of shallow marshy tidal bays along the entire coast of the Virginia end of the Delmarva Peninsula. The sole habitation on these islands, Broadwater, Virginia, was evacuated in 1936 following a hurricane. Because they are uninhabited they form an important ecological region, and several make up the Virginia Coast Reserve.
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
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 - once also inhabited with a resort hotel, church, and small town, until the 1896 hurricane
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. 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.
