The Eastern Shore of Virginia consists of two counties (Accomack and Northampton) on the Atlantic coast of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. The 70-mile long region is part of the Delmarva Peninsula and is separated from the rest of Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay. Its population was 45,553 as of 2010.
The terrain is very flat throughout, ranging from sea level to 50 feet (15 m) above sea level. The rural area has been devoted to cotton, soybean, vegetable and truck farming, and large-scale chicken farms. Since the late twentieth century, vineyards have been developed in both counties, and the Eastern Shore has received recognition as an American Viticultural Area (AVA). It is characterized by sandy and deep soil. The weather in the area has temperate summers and winters, significantly affected by the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
The area includes barrier islands. At the northern end of the Atlantic side are the beach community of Chincoteague, famous for its annual wild pony roundup, gathered from Assateague Island. Wallops Flight Facility, a NASA space launch base, is located at Chicoteague. Tangier Island, off the western shore in the Chesapeake Bay, is another day-tourist destination.
The Eastern Shore, geographically removed from the rest of Virginia, has had a unique history of settlement and development influenced by agriculture, fishing, tourism and the Pennsylvania Railroad. William G. Thomas describes the Eastern Shore during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as "a highly complex and interdependent landscape". He continues:
"It was a liminal place, a zone of interpenetration, where the settlement patterns, speech, demography, and political outcomes defined its place in the South but its engagement with technology and rapid transformation of the landscape betrayed other allegiances, motives, forces, and effects."
The 23-mile (37 km) long Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, which is part of U.S. Route 13, spans the mouth of the Bay and connects the Eastern Shore to metropolitan Norfolk-Virginia Beach and the rest of the state.
Famous quotes containing the words eastern shore, eastern, shore and/or virginia:
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Pleasant it is, when over a great sea the winds trouble the waters, to gaze from shore upon another’s great tribulation; not because any man’s troubles are a delectable joy, but because to perceive you are free of them yourself is pleasant.”
—Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
“Being blunt with your feelings is very American. In this big country, I can be as brash as New York, as hedonistic as Los Angeles, as sensuous as San Francisco, as brainy as Boston, as proper as Philadelphia, as brawny as Chicago, as warm as Palm Springs, as friendly as my adopted home town of Dallas, Fort Worth, and as peaceful as the inland waterway that rubs up against my former home in Virginia Beach.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)