Chincoteague Seafood and Oyster Festivals
by Sam Serio
Like bookends to a summer's worth of vacation novels, the annual Chincoteague Seafood and Oyster Festivals occur in May and October of each year. As summer ends, the oyster season on Chincoteague begins, and it was the oyster beds of Chincoteague and Assateague which inextricably intertwined their histories with the ocean around them. Their seafood harvests are what supported the islands' economy until well into the 20th century.
Long before Europeans had discovered the Chesapeake Bay's seafood-abundant waters, its original American Indian inhabitants had been bingeing on fresh seafood. In April of 1607, the first Englishmen to set foot on Cape Henry surprised a group of Indians roasting crabs, oysters, and clams in a shallow pit in the ground, and lunched on the shellfish when the frightened Indians ran off.
Seafood, from that moment, was essential to the survival of the American colonies. Three hundred years later, the residents of and visitors to Virginia's Eastern Shore celebrate their ties to the sea at Chincoteague's Seafood and Oyster Festivals.
The Chincoteague Seafood Festival began in 1967, sponsored by F&M bank to promote the Chamber of Commerce. The first Seafood Festival featured Chincoteague's little neck (Lil Nik) clams, generally regarded to be the in the US. Tickets were $5 and a crowd of 500 ate their fill.
Times may have changed, but the hunger for fresh Chincoteague seafood has not. The 2008 Seafood Festival drew a crowd of 4000 who descended on Toms Cove Park to "shell out" $40 each. They were rewarded with menu including not only the Lil Nik clams, but clam and oyster fritters, fried drum, trout, jambalaya, hush puppies, French fries, rum punch, and, of course, beer. There was plenty of live entertainment courtesy of the Marshall Tucker Band. Could there be any better way to celebrate the return of summer to the shore?
The Chincoteague Oyster Festival, another fundraising effort of the Chamber of Commerce, is held each October when cooler weather brings the beginning of oyster season. If you can make it to the Oyster Festival, your $35 ticket will entitle to experience what Chincoteague Indians did three centuries ago: eat all the oyster, clams, crabs, and other seafood delicacies you can handle in the hours between 10:00 and 4:00. You can even bring your own beer as long as it's not in a glass container.
The Oyster Festival feature the Chincoteague Seaside Oyster, prepared in an amazing number of ways; raw, steamed, fried, or as fritters, to name a few. (Perhaps they are even roasted in a shallow pit in the ground.) You can also indulge in clam chowder or fritter, cole slaw, hot dogs, and Pepsi, all of which the Indians would have found quite strange.
The people of Chincoteague now have festival-hosting down to an art form, with festivals peppering the calendar all year long. Whether your taste runs to seafood, blueberries, daffodils, or decoys, you'll find a festival on Chincoteague Island to celebrate them all!