Barrier island off of the Atlantic coast of Maryland and Virginia. The Maryland half is a national park, the Virginia half a state park. Several times a year the national park is the site of a beach burn.
Assateague is best known for the wild ponies that inhabit the island, thought to be originally either left there to graze by colonists and forgotten about, or washed up from a shipwreck. The ponies have the run of the island (including the campgrounds) and are protected by Federal law. Every year the Chincoteague, Virginia fire department rounds up a bunch of them and swims them across the Chincoteague Bay to Chincoteague, where they are tamed and sold at auction, as recounted in the children's book Misty of Chincoteague.