Vanishing

It’s no easy place, this squiggle of mud and marsh in the center of the Chesapeake Bay.

It is among the most isolated communities in the East, unconnected by road or bridge to anywhere else and a dozen miles from the nearest mainland town. The surrounding water is moody, as winds have plenty of room to build waves fast. A heaving deck is the fare one pays to reach the rest of America.

Storms bring lightning and waterspouts and the bay itself surging whitecapped over the roads. On calm days, clouds of mosquitoes and biting flies rise from the wetlands like mist.

Yet for more than 240 years, Virginia’s Tangier Island has been home to a settlement unlike any in the United States, and a hardy and stubborn people who would live nowhere else.

In the vast sea of styles that comprise American culture, Tangier is an island both literal and metaphorical. Here is an outpost that has been so isolated for so long that its 460 residents have their