President Grover Cleveland came down by private rail car in the early 1890s to hunt waterfowl on Hog Island, then a barrier island with pine forests, a town called Broadwater, and a hunting lodge that catered to wealthy northerners. Today there is no Broadwater. The pine forest is gone. The last residents left in 1936 after another hurricane, and what's there now is sand and marsh and migratory birds. The Virginia Barrier Islands have always been moving. The hurricanes of 1896 and 1933 just made the movement visible.
The Virginia Barrier Islands run in a continuous, narrow chain along the entire Atlantic coast of the Delmarva Peninsula's Virginia end. Shallow tidal bays separate them from the mainland; narrow inlets separate them from each other. Several were once much larger, with maritime forests of loblolly pine and small year-round populations. The barrier nature of these islands means they migrate. Sand erodes off the seaward side and accretes on the landward side, and the whole island slowly creeps westward toward the mainland. On a human timescale this looks like erosion. On a geological timescale it is just the islands doing what barrier islands do. The trouble comes when humans build on them, because the buildings do not migrate.
After the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad was completed down the Delmarva Peninsula in the late nineteenth century, wealthy sportsmen from northern cities began arriving by train and crossing by boat to the barrier islands. At least five lavish hunting and fishing clubs were established. Hog Island had a town, Broadwater, with a school and a church. Cobb Island had a resort hotel built by Nathan Cobb, Sr., a Cape Cod man who bought the island for $100 and a wagon-load of salt in 1839. Smith Island had a working farm and a lighthouse. President Grover Cleveland came down to hunt ducks on Hog Island in the early 1890s, and the photograph of his arrival hangs in archives as evidence that, briefly, these islands were a destination.
Two hurricanes broke the resort era. The 1896 East Coast hurricane flooded the barrier islands, killed many of the pine forests, and destroyed much of the Cobb Island resort. Residents began leaving for the mainland; in towns like Willis Wharf and Oyster, some of them brought their houses with them, taking the buildings apart and reassembling them on safer ground. The 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane finished what 1896 had started. Hog Island's last maritime forest died in that storm; no forest has reestablished. The town of Broadwater was evacuated in 1936 after yet another hurricane, and from then on the Virginia Barrier Islands have been uninhabited. Coast Guard Station Cobb Island held on until 1964, when the Coast Guard decommissioned it. The station building was barged to the mainland in 1998 to save it from the surf.
From north to south the chain runs: Assateague Island, the longest, divided between Maryland and Virginia and home to the wild Chincoteague Ponies; Chincoteague Island, now a backbarrier island; Wallops Island, where NASA's Wallops Flight Facility launches rockets; Assawoman, Metompkin, and Cedar Islands, the last of which lost its final private house to the sea in 2014; Parramore and Revel, now fused together and owned by the Nature Conservancy; Hog Island, the former home of Broadwater, the Hog Island Light, the Hog Island Sheep, and the Hog Island Fig; Cobb Island, now split in two by ocean overwash; Wreck, Shipshoal, and Myrtle Islands; Smith Island, with the Cape Charles Lighthouse and the Custis-Lee history; and Fisherman Island, the southernmost, which formed only two hundred years ago and which the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel crosses today. The islands are now mostly nature preserve. They are doing what they have always done: moving, sometimes faster than the people who once tried to hold them still.
The Virginia Barrier Islands stretch roughly from 37.10N at Fisherman Island at the southern mouth of Chesapeake Bay to 38.03N at the Maryland line, running along the Atlantic coast at longitudes near 75.40W to 75.70W. The chain is unmistakable from 5,000-10,000 feet AGL: a thin line of sand, marsh, and scattered hummocks, with the larger barrier bays separating them from the mainland Eastern Shore. Best viewed flying north-south along the coast. Major landmarks include the Cape Charles Lighthouse on Smith Island, the Hog Island Light, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel crossing Fisherman Island, and the NASA Wallops Flight Facility further north. Nearest airports: KMFV (Accomack County), KSBY (Salisbury Regional), KORF (Norfolk International). Watch for NASA Wallops launch NOTAMs.