Nearby

“It’s referred to as the new bridge,” says Phoebe Harkum, a longtime resident who lives in a much-modified, old family farmhouse. “But it’s not new.” Long before the bridge was built, at the turn of the 20th century, Harkum’s grandfather used his fishing boat as the town’s ferry, hauling produce to market and returning with essentials ordered by catalogue. “Used to be,” Harkum says, sitting on a rocking chair amid heirlooms including a shoulder-high crank Victrola and a ship-to-shore radio of her father’s, “guys would wait out there to meet fellows from Hampton who were coming over the new bridge, and turn them away so they wouldn’t come in and court the girls.”

“It was like a picket line,” adds her husband, Ray, with a chuckle. Visitors nowadays have no such troubles. Instead of a picket line, they are greeted by pear trees, which line the main thoroughfare and bear resplendent white blossoms in spring.

Jutting into the Chesapeake Bay between the Poquoson River and the Back River, Poquoson’s outline against the surrounding blue is the shape of a bull’s head. For that reason, Poquoson residents call themselves Bull Islanders. Sam Ferguson, a retired waterman, gives a second reason for the name. “People used to let their cattle run free through the marsh,” he says. “So the name Bull Island just seemed natural.”

The first mention of Poquoson was recorded in an English land patent issued to Captain Christopher Cal­thorpe on April 26, 1631. It is the oldest continuously named city in Virginia—and in some places the town’s history is tangible. Walking down a row of gray grave markers in Weston Cemetery, you can trace Poquoson bloodlines that have been around since the 1700s. Ferguson’s Poquoson lineage traces back four centuries, and Harkum’s dates to the War of 1812, when her forebears moved from the Eastern Shore because “it’d be safer over here if the British came back again.”