Tangier Island: The Chesapeake Bay Town Losing Ground to the Water, Virginia

In the middle of the Chesapeake Bay, about 12 miles from the nearest mainland town, lies a low, marshy island where the only town is built on a few strips of higher ground connected by small bridges. This is Tangier, Virginia, one of the last inhabited islands in the Chesapeake. Tangier was settled in colonial times, and for generations its people have made their living on the water as watermen, crabbing and oystering in the bay. The island is especially known for its soft-shell crabs. Cut off from the mainland, Tangier developed its own culture and its own way of speaking. Islanders have a distinctive accent, with a tendency to stretch out vowels, along with words and phrases you won't hear anywhere else. Linguists often attribute it to the island's isolation. The island is also disappearing. Rising water, sinking land and erosion have taken about two-thirds of Tangier's land since 1850. The island sits only a few feet above sea level, and storms regularly push water into the town. A channel cut through the island in 1966 has been linked to worsening erosion. In some places, the shoreline has been retreating about 32 feet a year. The low marshes that once buffered the island have been breaking apart, and gaps have opened between Tangier and its neighboring islands. The population has shrunk too. From about 1,100 people in the early 1900s, it fell to 436 in the 2020 census, and recent reports put it closer to 250. Young people leave for jobs on the mainland, and older residents are dying. In 2015, an Army Corps of Engineers study by marine biologist David Schulte drew national attention: if the losses continued, it estimated, residents would likely have to abandon the town within 25 to 50 years. There have been defenses. In 1990, the Corps built a 5,700-foot seawall on the island's west side, and it has largely stopped erosion there. A stone jetty to protect the harbor followed around 2020. But estimates for fully protecting and restoring the island run to $250 million to $350 million, far more than has been secured. For now, the watermen of Tangier still head out on the bay each morning, from the island where their families have lived for generations.