SINEPUXENT BAY BY GILBERT C KLINGEL

SINEPUXENT BAY

COUNTLESS YEARS IN THE MAKING TO OUTLAST MAN

BY GILBERT C. KLINGEL

Many years ago it was necessary to cross over Sinepuxent Bay to get to Fenwick Island where

Ocean City is , but today if you are on the Harry Kelley Memorial Bridge going into Ocean

City from Berlin or Salisbury, the west, the bridge at the confluence of Isle of Wright Bay

and Sinepuxent Bay, Sinapuxent is to you right or to the south. It flows on the west side

of Assateague Island until is reaches Chincoteague. Virginia and the Chincoteague Bay.

Assateague Island is a long strip of tumbled sand piles, dunes, uplifted ridges amd patches

of vegetation and beach grasses. West, or back of, this area lie the waters of Sinepuxent and

Chincoteague Bays.

These bays are shallow basins, broken up with many many mud flats, reed banks, islands and

channels, large patches and small patches of open water. Then these bays merge with the

Eastern Shore.

What is the story of these bays and creeks. Why are they there ? How old are they and how

did they come into being?

In the beginning there was no Sinepuxent Bay, no Eastern Shore, only the wild rolling

ocean, masses of waves, and on the ocean there were no steam boats, nor sails, and perhaps

no man. The Eastern Shore lay under water, part of a continental shelf, full of crustaceans

and other creatures for fish that swam above it to feed on . It was flat, as it is now, for the

countless centuries.

But nothing last forever so in the course of time, earth began to heave and alter its form,

rising here and settling there. Finally these oscillation of the sea bottom rose for a last time

and came to rest, thus, the flat sea bottom became the Easter Shore, level, flat, without

mountains or high hills. Still there was no Sinepuxent nor Chincoteague Bay, nor, sand

bars like Fenwick Island and Assateague Island. There was only a newly risen coast, from

which the ocean bed sloped gently out, maybe a hundred miles or so, before it descended

into the deep black depths.

Over these shallow basins came the wind born waves that gnawed at the shoreline, taking

bites of it back out to sea for awhile, however, the shallows built up to break the force of the

force of the waves but the off shore surf kept the ocean bottom in turmoil, throwing sand

forward to the beaches. These sands drifted into the still waters, settled, and accumulated

into ridges that would have remained except for another factor which entered, the currents

which piled up the sand ridges , higher and higher, making little islets above the water. Years

passed, these islats shifted with the currents and as the rose higher and higher grew closer

until they were one long strip. Nature tuned in to help by causeing the winds and waves and currents to work together holding the strip islands in place. Behind these strip islands crystal

clear water lay. Erosion made the waters shallow. This took centuries to happen.

Also there were mud bars. Home to scallops and clams, crabs, which came in from the ocean

but as they came about above water there came green algae and grasses, cat tails and wild rice.

The mud bars became grass islands which remain today., and then came hordes of ducks, rails,

heron and all things common to marshes.