28 Report of the Board of Shell Fish Commissioners. 
WORCESTER COUNTY. 
CHINCOTEAGUE BAY. 
(See Charts of Natural Oyster Bars, Nos. 13, 14 and 15.) 
The waters of Worcester County which, at the present time, 
are adapted for the growth of oysters are included in the part 
of Chincoteague Bay lying north of the Maryland-Virginia 
State boundary line. 
Prior to the date of the closing of the Popes Creek Inlet 
the natural oyster bars of the Chincoteague Bay were much 
more extensive and productive than now and some natural 
bars were to be found in Sinnepuxent Bay also. When this 
. inlet became closed, however (it being the chief source of salt 
water for the upper part of Chincoteague Bay and Sinne- 
puxent Bay), the waters of the upper part of Chincoteague 
Bay gradually became too fresh to support a rapid growth 
of oysters and so fresh during exceptionally wet seasons 
that oysters were killed. The waters of Sinnepuxent Bay be- 
came so fresh that their value for growing oysters was en- 
tirely destroyed. 
Assateague Island, which forms the barrier separating 
Chincoteague and Sinnepuxent Bays from the Atlantic Ocean, 
is very narrow at several places and the practicability of 
cutting an inlet through it to bring about an exchange of 
water, through the action of the tide, between these bays and+ 
the ocean and thus to restore to these waters their former 
value for producing oysters, has suggested itself many times. 
The Sinnepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company has been 
formed to excavate such an inlet at some point between Fen- 
wick Island and Green Run and, in 1906, the State entered 
into an agreement with this Company whereby the Company 
is to receive a patent to about 19,000 acres of bottoms in 
Chincoteague, Sinnepuxent and Isle of Wight bays, for the 
purposes of oyster culture, when the waters of the bays 
named shall have been made sufficiently salt to support 
oysters through the influence of the salt water introduced 
through the inlet eut and maintained by the Company. 
