Tangier Island’s troubled waters
Explore Virginia’s only inhabited offshore island — with fewer than 500 residents — and find out what makes it so unique and why it’s at risk.
By Peter Hedlund, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities
Today the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities (VFH) is launching a new Voyager story in Google Earth about Tangier Island. Using images, audio, text, and Google Street View imagery which we collected last year, our goal is to introduce this unique Virginia community to the world.
Tangier Island is the only populated offshore island in Virginia. Because of their isolation the approximately 465 residents residents of Tangier have preserved a distinctive culture. Elements of this include a unique accent and vernacular that can be traced back to the original 17th century English settlers, a life centered around the Methodist Church, Virginia’s last combined K-12 public school, and an almost complete dependence on the Chesapeake Bay to provide the island’s livelihood.
This culture is threatened by a rising sea level and coastal erosion. According to scientists from the Army Corps of Engineers, the island may only remain habitable for 25–50 years. The Tangier community is not so pessimistic. A sea wall, built in 1989 to protect the western shore, has proven effective in slowing the effects of erosion, and residents are advocating at the state and federal level for similar projects for other parts of their vulnerable shores.
Since 2014, VFH’s Encyclopedia Virginia has been working with Google Earth Outreach to explore how Google’s geo tools can be used to help tell Virginia’s stories. Examples include Street View tours of culturally significant places and dynamic maps that enable people to discover history in their communities. Voyager, the new storytelling platform in Google Earth, has proven to be a compelling way to tell the story of Tangier Island.
In this Voyager story you will encounter a harbor thick with crab shanties; these offshore structures built on stilts are the source of world class softshell crabs and island’s economic hub; you can listen to a Tangierman describe hunting for centuries-old Native American arrowheads along a deserted beach; and you can virtually wander among the last remains of a town washed into the bay almost a century ago using Google Street View. This story allows you to visit the community’s main streets making the abstract real and evoking empathy for the people who live there.
It is our hope that this Voyager story helps connect the larger world with the small, remote, and threatened community of Tangier Island.
