By Lynne Foster | Black and white photos courtesy of the Island Inn in Ocracoke and the Outer Banks History Center. Color photos by Linda Lauby

There once was a time on the Outer Banks when vibrant sun-kissed boys rode with the wind on Ocracoke Island. They lived out the Great American Dream as they streaked on bareback ponies over the beach and the dunes and splashed through saltwater marshes chasing the wild Spanish mustangs that roamed their island.

These free-spirited souls were the Boy Scouts of Ocracoke Troop 290, the nation’s first mounted troop, and they shared a unique freedom and a matchless bond with the feral horses.

Ocracoke Island in the 1950s was the stuff of Hollywood movies. Beautiful beyond words, remote, wild and unspoiled, it was a magical place with abundant treasures for eager, curious boys to discover. Best of all, there were wild horses. And anyone who wanted could have his own pony!

While many of America’s youth were sprawled across linoleum floors watching Gene Autry on black-and-white TV sets and playing with miniature cowboy and Indian figures, the Ocracoke boys were playing cowboys for real. They weren’t frontier fighters, except perhaps in their imaginations, and there weren’t any shootouts in the village at high noon or at any other time of day. But there was plenty of ridin’, herdin’, lassoin’, and breakin’ going on. And it was all happening in paradise.

Boy Scout Troop 290 of Ocracoke was the brainstorm of Scoutmaster Marvin Garrish, a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Garrish decided to harness the boys’ boundless energies by letting them do what they loved best. He devised a program that allowed them to achieve scouting goals without all the amenities enjoyed by scouts who lived elsewhere.

The first requirement was for each scout to get his own horse. That wasn’t an easy task but it didn’t take much persuasion to get a boy out hunting for his ideal mount. Ocracoke Island’s ponies were organized in at least 10 different herds, with each herd under the control of a dominant stallion. The size of each herd depended on the prowess of the stallion. A few, it is said, had as many as 20 mares in their domain.

The stallions weren’t themselves easily controlled. There were tremendous stallion fights for the mares’ attentions. They fought capture too and could get mighty fierce about it. It often took two boys and a risky chase through sand, mud and water before a horse was even lassoed.

Then the really dangerous work began. Breaking a wild horse, as anyone who watches Westerns can tell you, isn’t for sissies. Who better to do it than a dauntless adolescent boy? After many displays of stallion bravado – bucking and stomping and biting – the ponies were usually tamed, and the young cowboys’ occasional injuries were a source of pride.

Of course, the scouts had their good deeds to perform. They ran errands, helped out the older residents in the village and took part in various ceremonial functions, including serving as mounted honor guard for the Coast Guard. When Governor Luther Hodges came to the island in the late 1950s it was Troop 290 that met his helicopter on the beach and escorted him into the village.

This scout troop even assisted in mosquito control, riding into the marshes to spray from horseback. Sometimes they would be called upon to pull a cow out of the mire. But, best of all, was the honest-to-goodness cattle drive. Now they could really be cowpokes, herding the cattle and other livestock that grazed freely on the island.

After a hard day’s work on horseback, the boys would get cleaned up and head over to Jake’s – Ocracoke’s dance hall, complete with a jukebox and a pot-bellied stove. Better yet, it was where the tourist girls were. Jake’s was small, so the dancing was close, and rumor has it that those little ladies couldn’t resist the offer of a horseback ride with an exotic island cowboy.

There was pony penning to be done, too, and that was a big affair. It always occurred on the fourth of July, coinciding with Ocracoke’s Homecoming Weekend, when islanders living away all came home and when the island was enjoying peak tourist season. In such an atmosphere the scouts had an appreciative audience. They loved playing to the enthusiastic crowd as much as the visitors loved cheering them on.

They would round up the mustangs from all across the island and drive them into the pens where a vet would be waiting. There, the ponies got checked over and treated if necessary. The scouts would brand them and notch some of the ponies’ ears for identification. Some of the feistier stallions would be gelded.

There were parades and races and lots of fun. Earlier each year, members of Troop 290 got the chance to show off their skills to another crowd when they took the ponies "down below" to Hatteras. Each spring, they gathered in the old weather bureau and joined in the annual Pirates’ Jamboree.

But first they had to get there, and that was a challenge! Those young boys rode their ponies up the hard sand from Ocracoke Village all the way to the north ferry landing. The ferry in those days was a wooden vessel that held four cars – five if the fifth car was small and there were enough men to pick it up and slew it around sideways.

To load the ponies onto the ferry, the boys had to walk them up a narrow wooden ramp. The horses always balked, so the scouts got the gentlest horse, usually Old Lighthouse, going first. The rest would follow. Then, the scouts had to keep the ponies calm and steady as the little ferry, low to the water, rocked and rolled its way across the inlet. It was an especially exciting ride if there was a mare in the herd. Then, the stallions got active, and the boys had to use all their handling skills to keep things under control.

Once in Hatteras they would walk them down another ramp, mount up, parade through the village and then tear over to the beach for the races and more adulation — much to the envy of the Hatteras boys. It was a heady time, a time when boys’ fantasies became real. It was also a brief moment in history. When the scouts became young men at age 16, they replaced their banker ponies with automobiles and the tradition died out.

There are still banker ponies on Ocracoke; a new foal joined the herd this spring. But they no longer explore the island with ebullient young boys on their backs.

Note: The Banker Ponies on Ocracoke Island are now under the care of the National Park Service at Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The population remains stable, averaging 25 to 30 horses. The pony pens are located off Highway 12 approximately 5 miles north of Ocracoke Village.