Exploring Assateague Island from the beginning

There are certainly ponies, nature trails, and ghost crabs to catch on Assateague Island — but one of the smartest moves you can make before exploring Assateague National Seashore is starting at the Barrier Island Visitor Center. It's part rest stop, part orientation point, with hands-on exhibits, a small theater, and displays covering everything from the island's ecology to its surprising past as an almost-resort town destroyed by a 1962 storm. Park rangers and interpreters staff the center daily, ready to point you toward the ponies, the trails, or whatever else you came for. For park fees, camping details, and pony-viewing tips beyond the visitor center, see our full Assateague Island guide.

The horse-naming lottery allows people to make donations for the opportunity to name the new horses.

Targeted, engaging programming at Assateague Island

Assateague Island's nature interpreters do everything from teach clamming and musseling classes, to leading guided nature trail hikes. These all are part of a bigger plan to make sure that the barrier island's ecology and history are both understood and valued. The Visitor Center is kind of the heart of that whole program. It affords interpreters to give tours of the entire island without leaving the building, bringing people an up close and personal look at the native species and processes that keep the island one of the great destinations in the region. Beyond the hands-on displays, the center also has a small theater that shows educational videos about the island and its history. Speaking of history:

Back when Assateague nearly was a resort community unto itself.

Plenty of history for exploring Assateague Island

Did you know Assateague once was being groomed as an Ocean City-style resort? Have you walked on whats left of the paved streets of that destroyed town? How about its history as a stop of for pirates, smugglers and all other sorts of romanticized half-villains from the colonial era through prohibition? The displays chronicling the island's history provide depth that accompany's the ecological displays' breadth. In addition to the salvaged anchor from a Spanish ship and a few remaining street signs from the abandoned development, the visitors center provides information that can help people understand why this island has attracted visitors for more than 400 years.

People stop in all day for directions and information about the park as well as the local area. The National Park Ranger interpreters always are helpful.

People whose job it is to know

If you visit museums regularly while on vacation you know about rolling the docent dice. Sometimes the people who are providing you information are volunteers who are passionate but maybe a little less knowledgable than you might hope. In the visitors center the docents and other helpers are supported by Park Rangers, men and women paid and trained to be, if not experts, certainly highly knowledgable about both the island and the surrounding area. They are qualified to give both directions and advice about local attractions and island activities as well as to advise on the rules for enjoying yourself at Assateague.