CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. - Before houses, shops and attractions lined Main Street on Chincoteague Island, there once stood an ice cream shop, a hotel, a post office and a factory. Just over 100 years ago, the island was filled with dirt roads and wood and brick buildings, according to assistant director of the Museum of Chincoteague Island Cindy Faith.
“It looks sort of like any movie set that you would have seen out west depicting the turn of the century,” Faith said. “They had second story porches overlooking the street, and it was dirt roads still, so it was a bit primitive.”
This was until fires destroyed parts of the town in the 1920s.
In 1920, a fire broke out in a local ice cream parlor on the east side of Main Street, according to Faith. Faith said that the fire was caused by two boys working in the ice cream parlor at the time, however she and the museum still do not know the reason behind starting the fire.
“Either they did it to just get the day out of work because they wanted to go out and go fishing and the fire got out of control, or later, they said that the man who owned the business paid them $10 to set it on fire for insurance reasons,” Faith said. “Either way, we'll never know the real reason.”
According to Faith, the fire burned down buildings such as the newly built Marine Bank, the local post office and the Atlantic Hotel.
“It goes all the way down Main Street, way past the downtown movie theater that's there now and all that,” Faith said. “There was a post office back there, there was a hotel, there was a blacksmith shop and other businesses back there, all of them lost in that, in that fire.”
Now 100 years later, buildings like the Island Theatre and the Taylor Bank now stand on the remnants of the first fire.
A similar fire broke out in 1924 on the west side of Main Street while the town was still recovering from the previous one three years prior, damaging a barrel factory and the Wilton Mercantile, a local store, according to Faith.
Similar to the 1920 fire, the 1924 fire was arson. Faith said that the 1924 fire was started by the wife of the owner of the barrel factory in anger towards her husband. The barrel factory stood where Don’s Seafood currently resides.
“That side of Main Street, there are only two buildings that survived,” Faith said. “That was the Boatman's Bank building and the Watson Mercantile, which is now Sundial Books.”
Despite the financial damage done to the sides of Main Street and the emotional damage done to the citizens of Chincoteague, Faith said the fires gave the town an opportunity to rebuild itself to be stronger.
“It gave the town an opportunity to straighten the road and do some other things that probably would have never happened, because you can't just change everybody's business alignment, but now you have a clean slate,” Faith said. “They did that kind of street change, but then buildings do start to get rebuilt, and we have one side of Main Street that is now being rebuilt in brick and stone.”
In addition to rebuilding the town’s infrastructure, the fires eventually led to the creation of the fire company and the Pony Swim as it is known today, according to fire company.
“It’s interesting how, when you're in the moment and you're living through a tragedy, you cannot see beyond that,” Faith said. “Then it's only through the window of time that you can look back and say, ‘Oh yes, that was a really great idea we had, and look how it has blossomed and changed and grown, and how grateful we should all be that they came up with this idea.’”