Tangier Island: Go experience it while you can, before it is long gone

Next time we visit the Chesapeake Bay, I plan to spend a couple of nights on Tangier. They say time stops on the island. One can experience walks on the beach and the most intense sunrises and sunsets you can ever imagine. It is almost heaven.

We traveled from the beautiful Shenandoah Valley 3 ½ hours to Buzzards Point Marina, near Reedville, VA. Bought tickets online ($28.00 for an adult) for the 95 feet long excursion vessel Chesapeake Breeze (built 1981) which took us 14 miles out to a unique looking and windswept Tangier Island. The cruise took about one hour forty minutes and we had 3 hours (11:30 to 2:30) before departing at 2:30 steaming back to Reedville.

Immediately on the island you can take a 15-minute guided golf cart tour for $5.00 a person. Most visitors have lunch first and walkabout second, so there’s a big restaurant rush right off the ferry. The food on the island is pedestrian and you may want to choose a hamburger or sandwich rather than the seafood platters.

There are Bed & Breakfasts on the island if you choose to stay the night. They do take debit/credit cards but there is no ATM on the island. The many gift shops provide the usual trinkets and t-shirts but no keepsakes. There is a history museum and interpretive cultural center with a $3 admission which comprises artifacts dug out of attics and sheds by the locals. A video tells the story of living on the island over generations.

In Tangier's small museum, a sign tells me you cannot be called a Tangierman until you're a fourth-generation resident. First generation is a "come-here;" second is a "stay-here;" third is a "been-here," and fourth finally earns the label.

During your visit, you will have to entertain yourself. But don’t worry too much. Once you step off the boat, one gets the feeling they are on a remote island off the coast of Maine. Perhaps it is a wildness atmosphere that separates Tangier from our modern life. If you want to get about quickly, one can rent electric and gas golf carts as well as bikes for adults and children. There are few cars on the island.

Unfortunately, if you take the ferry, you have choices to make. There is not enough time to sit down for lunch, tour the sites and lay on the beach. Set your priorities before you go, and pack a swimsuit if the beach is a priority. There are no facilities at this beach. You can change in the ferry restroom, the History Museum when you get there, or simply wear your swimsuit.

For average folks, it is a great adventure get away for a day or two.

As early as the 1670s, colonists held patents to the island, which they primarily used to graze livestock. A century later, the first permanent residents arrived on the island. At first they made their living by farming, but fishing, crabbing, and oystering soon took over as their primary occupation. The current economy is soft shell crabs and oysters. Tangier claims the title “soft-shell crab capital of the world” and is said to have caught more crabs than any other town on the bay.

Tangier, was once a community of 1,500 residents living on at least six separate ridges, but by 1900 there were only 1,200 inhabitants residing here. In 1960 the population was 876, by 2010, it was 726. During the 2000s, the population has been eroded by stricter crab restrictions as part of a larger effort by Virginia and Maryland to reduce the catch of female crabs and and the more modern convenience of living on the mainland.

The island has a K-12 school (total 60 students), softball field, gymnasium, health center, water tower (fed from 12 artesian wells dug around the island), one grocery store, a library, two churches, several restaurants and eleven cemeteries to support a population of 433 (as of 2020) with a median age of 55. In 2024 and 2028, the population is projected to be 428 and 420 respectively. When the youth graduate high school here, they go off to state colleges or join the armed forces and do not come back to live.

Until the 1940's, most houses relied upon rainwater trapped in cisterns for drinking water. In 1983 the private wells, including one dug in 1925 for a fish-packing plant, were consolidated into a community water system. The community water system relies upon wells drilled 800-1,000 feet deep, extracting groundwater from the deep Potomac Aquifer.

These are working class, church going people who make a living toiling for many hours a day. The islanders want nothing more than to earn an honest living on the bay and raise their families in a tight-knit and tradition-minded community. The islanders are famous for their Cornish accent that evolved from the original colonists from Wales, England. Visitors are aware of Tangier Islanders unusual accent and for the areas small size—just a “dime on the map,” as one resident says.

The community on the island is very resilient, surviving an invasion by the British in 1812 and occupation until 1815. There have been four epidemics on the island. In 1866, a cholera epidemic swept the island. Numerous people died and were quickly buried in their front yards without a marker. The entire island economy was destroyed when the people put down their livestock and evacuated the island. They were unable to return until the following year. In the 1870s, the island was struck with tuberculosis and measles and in the 1880s the island was swept with smallpox. Numerous storms inundated the island with flood waters. One of these storms, the August 1933 storm, covered the entire island with flood water up to the second story of some buildings. After this flood receded some 500 people out of 1,400, a little over a third of the residents at that time, left the island for good.

Methodism has been and remains a very strong influence on Tangier, stemming from the charismatic preaching and revival camp meetings held here in the early 1800s by Joshua Thomas, the famed "parson of the islands." Because of their ties to the Northern Methodist Church, Tangier residents in the 19th century did not support slavery and did not join Virginia in seceding from the Union during the Civil War. Religious values are still very important to the community. The islanders are unselfish people. On this island, it is not about the individual, it is about what everyone together can get done.

The best way to get to Tangier in the off-season (October through April), is the the Mail Service boat, Courtney Thomas which runs all year round except on Sunday. The mail boat departs from Crisfield, MD once each day. It's the boat most locals use to get to the mainland where they go shopping, meet with doctors, conduct business, visit relatives or seek entertainment. Residents store over 100 cars in Crisfield’s garages and parking lots. Grocery store supplies are brought by the mail boat and large items like mobile homes and building supplies are brought in by barge.

The island has a small airstrip on its western side that can accommodate small planes and helicopters; the unmonitored strip operates on the honor system; a drop-off box asks for a $10 parking or overnight fee.

Tangier Island resides in the middle of the bay approximate 84 miles from Annapolis and 54 miles from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. The island has lost two-thirds of its land since 1850. At an elevation of 3 to 4 feet, high ground is transforming to marsh, marsh to mudflat, and mudflat to open water. Two communities, Ruben and Canaan, once resided on the the northern end of the island, now just abandoned mudflats known as Uppards. The small villages were submerged in the 1930s. Currently the island mass is comprised of approximately 740 acres, of which just 83 acres are habitable. Erosion is shrinking the island by about 9 acres per year.

According to David Schulte, the veteran U.S. Army Corps of Engineers marine biologist's recent independent study, Tangier had just 10-11 habitable years left for its residents. Schulte estimates that the West Ridge, one of the town’s three populated “ridges,” will convert to wetlands by 2033. That will be followed by the Main Ridge in 2035 and the Canton Ridge in 2051, when Tangier Island will be mostly submerged by rising seas.

Flooding disasters have an extremely adverse effect on the Town’s economy and could potentially push the town beyond recovery.

Go experience a centuries-old way of life that is gradually disappearing, the Waterman’s Life, while you still can.