On page 17, we introduced the wild ponies of Assateague and Chincoteague. Here are two more feral herds that run free along America’s East Coast.
Today, the Outer Banks, a group of islands off the coast of North Carolina that shelter the state’s shore from the Atlantic, are connected to the mainland by a bridge. But for hundreds of years, the islands were isolated . . . and so were the horses who lived there. No one seems to know for sure when they arrived. Local lore says they were shipwreck survivors, but it’s more likely they came over in the 1520s when the Spanish tried to colonize the area.
Today, about 400 horses still live on the Outer Banks, and the group has been recognized as its own breed. The Bankers look a lot like Spanish horses: they’re small (14 to 15 hands tall and 800 to 1,000 pounds) and have broad foreheads, strong backs, and silky tails and manes. They’re also generally calm and friendly and take well to domestication if captured—in fact, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mainlanders regularly rounded up the horses and sold them at auctions.
Banker horses adapted well over the years, and the seashore has become their natural habitat. But as people moved onto the islands, the horses had less room to roam, so locals have started moving the animals to uninhabited areas where they can be protected. On a few of the islands, the National Park Service looks after them.
Off the southern coast of Georgia lies 18-mile long Cumberland Island. Most of it is undeveloped and under the protection of the National Park Service, but the rest is owned by the Carnegie family, who used it as a retreat in the early 1900s. Before that, the island hosted an English fort and then the home of Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene, whose widow built a mansion called Dungeness there. The mansion burned to the ground during the Civil War, but its stone walls and chimneys remain and are a frequent grazing spot for the island’s feral horses.
On Cumberland, the horses rule. Cars aren’t allowed (except National Park vehicles), and rangers warn visitors to yield to horses in their path—the animals are used to human visitors, but they aren’t used to changing their habits to suit the tourists. The original stock probably came from 16th-century Spanish explorers, and over the years, the island’s various residents introduced new breeds, too. Today, about 250 horses live on the island.
Cumberland Island horses look a lot like Banker horses but are usually a little larger. And they have long, “scooper”- like toes . . . all the better for galloping over the island’s deep sand dunes.