False Cape State Park

False Cape State Park is a 4,321-acre (17.49 km2) state park located on the Currituck Banks Peninsula, but within the city of Virginia Beach, from Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge to the state border with North Carolina. Access is generally by foot or bicycle through the wildlife refuge from Virginia, or by boat or canoe from either the bayside or Atlantic shoreline. The park and former Wash Woods community therein gained their respective names because some mariners mistakenly believed it a barrier island near Cape Henry and the Chesapeake Bay further north (or to the now-landlocked Currituck Sound or ocean-accessible Albemarle Sound much further south). Some would run aground, particularly in severe weather, then their cargo washed ashore. The Currituck Banks Peninsula is a one-mile-wide (1.6 km) sandy spit between the Back Bay of the Currituck Sound and the Atlantic Ocean, and just north of Mackay Island National Wildlife Refuge in North Carolina.