09/28/2026
When did us hear at Rugby Creek you can hike the Highlands and see the Ponies. We are also the retirement home of one of the most photographed and famous Ponies, Fabio!
🐴 In 1974 Bill Pugh and another pony owner turned 20 ponies loose in Grayson Highlands State Park, and about 100 of their descendants are up there now.
The reason was practical. The high grassy balds in south-west Virginia were no longer being kept open, and ponies eat exactly what keeps a bald a bald.
The Wilburn Ridge Pony Association was set up as a non-profit in 1975 and still owns the herds. Members check them through the year and put out salt and worming blocks.
About 100 ponies in 10 to 15 bands now range over the park's 1,500 acres and more than 3,500 acres of the adjoining national recreation area. Hikers meet them on the trail and assume they are wild. They are not, quite. They are owned, watched over, and mostly left alone.
Each fall the association drives them into a V-shaped fence to check the herd's health and separate the foals, which are auctioned. Prices have run from $35 to nearly $1,000, and the foals by the stallion Fabio have fetched the most, for their blond manes.
Fifty-odd years of grazing, and the balds are still open grass.
Have you met the Grayson Highlands ponies on the trail, and did they come to you or ignore you completely?
