OCRACOKE — Residents of the popular island getaway of Ocracoke didn’t let proximity to Washington, D.C., stop them from joining millions of marchers in what became an international phenomenon.

Last Saturday, more than 100 fulltime residents of the island, and a few visitors, added their numbers to the women’s marches that occurred in cities large and small across the U.S. in tandem with the main Women’s March on Washington. Ocracoke Current’s Sundae Horn organized the march, which started at Books to be Red, then went to the Ocracoke lighthouse and back again.

A group picture taken at the lighthouse allowed Horn to accurately give a crowd count of 108, though others joined in on the return trip, she said.

“I thought we’d have a dozen of us, so it was really a surprise how many people showed up,” Horn said. “People just kept coming and coming.”

Horn said she wanted to attend the march in D.C., but instead decided to host her own. Like the march in the nation’s Capitol, she invited people to march for a variety of causes.

“The national women’s march had a whole lot of different issues, not just women’s issues,” Horn said. “I made it wide open when I put the word out.”

Signs in support of environmental, education, women’s, immigrant and LGBTQ issues were all represented; signs against anyone or anything were not, she said.

Afterward, marchers gathered at the stage next to Books to be Red to share their reasons for attending, sign songs and read poetry aloud.

“It wasn’t as organized as the big women’s march, but for what we did, I think we had a pretty good turnout,” she said.

Horn said the end result was the marchers of Ocracoke walked away with a commitment to taking a more active role in politics.

“Everyone left there thinking that they would continue writing, calling, emailing, our congressmen and participate in what’s going on,” Horn said. “We’ve been trying to get out information about how to call our senators. Not everybody knows who their senator is, and that can be intimidating, but the nice people who are there will take your information and let you talk.”