The current name, Oak Island, seems to be based on the presence of the red oaks with their characteristic umbrella-shaped domes. At one time they were far more numerous than they are today. A chart drawn by a British cartographer named Des Barres in the last quarter of the eighteenth century calls the island Glouster Isle and names today’s Mahone Bay as Mecklenburgh Bay. In spite of Des Barres’s nomenclature, however, some legal documents which are older than his chart refer to the island as Oak Island.
The highest points of Oak Island barely rise ten metres above the surface of the Atlantic. These high points are drumlins, miniature hills of very hard clay inherited from the Ice Age. Below them Oak Island stands on limestone. Geologically, there are several significant features which are worth careful consideration: the hard clay, for example, is firm enough to be excavated to a considerable depth without any lateral supports being used; and it is also practically impervious to water seepage. Our friend George Young, a professional surveyor in the district for many years, knew a great deal about the characteristics of the local limestone. In his long and extensive experience he encountered many curious natural holes, caverns, shafts, and connecting passageways in the geological formations surrounding Oak Island. The mysterious Money Pit, with its ancillary system of tunnels and vaults, may actually be an adaptation rather than an entirely artificial structure.
The island’s longer dimension runs from west to east, the western end having been linked to the mainland by a causeway since 1965. The Money Pit is close to the eastern, or Atlantic, side. That part of the island, on the seaward side of the central swamp, is bleak, scarred by craters and the frequently disturbed earth of many old excavations. The rest of it supports the usual island grass, trees, and shrubs. There are interesting ruins here and there, together with a small museum where core samples from exploratory drillings and unearthed artifacts are on display.
Halifax, seventy kilometres north of Oak Island, was established as early as 1749. Lunenburg, fifteen kilometres southwest of the island, was settled in 1753.
In October 1759, Charles Lawrence, who was then the governor general of Nova Scotia, included Oak Island in the Shoreham Grant. This grant established the town of Shoreham (which is now Chester) seven kilometres northeast of Oak Island. There is an interesting possibility that this same Lawrence family may have had connections with Rennes-le-Château via the curious tomb at Arques, which was a facsimile of the one in Poussin’s famous painting “Bergeres d’Arcadie” until it was deliberately demolished by the new owner in the late 1980s. This facsimile tomb was constructed nearly a century ago on the orders of an American emigrant named Lawrence who settled near Rennes-le-Château. Records indicate that his wife and mother were buried in it, and when we ourselves photographed the interior in the 1970s, there were certainly two coffins at the bottom.
Oak Island then became the possession of four families: the Monros, the Lynches, the Seacombes, and the Youngs (possibly George’s ancestors), although it was not inhabited when Daniel McGinnis landed there thirty-six years later in 1795. It is no longer possible to state with any degree of certainty how those four farming families used the island, but, in all probability, they would have pastured some of their livestock there. (Island pasturage had the advantage of not needing to be fenced, and, in the normal course of events, the small islands in Mahone Bay would have been free of predators.) In the eighteenth century, when the oaks were still plentiful, the island might also have been a useful source of timber.
The earliest known survey would seem to have been the work of Charles Morris, who was then working as an official surveyor in the area. His charts divided the island into thirty-two parcels of land of about four acres each: the first twenty ranged along the northern edge; the last twelve were along the southern shore.
Early records show that Timothy Lynch purchased land parcel number nineteen from Edward Smith in 1768. (Smith’s Cove may have got its name from this same Edward Smith.) Lynch’s Plot Nineteen was well towards the eastern tip of Oak Island, adjacent to Plot Eighteen, which held the mysterious “Money Pit.” The John Smith (apparently no relation to Edward) who was one of the three original discoverers of the Money Pit in 1795 paid £7.10 for Plot Eighteen on June 26 of that year.
Presumably, he did this immediately after the three lads had begun their pioneering dig. The former owner is listed as a Casper Wollenhaupt of Lunenburg. Despite Oak Island’s then-sinister local reputation as a haunt of murderous pirates (and worse), young John Smith took his wife and family to live there and thrived for another sixty years.
Curious rumours of dark supernatural forces on Oak Island were reinforced by a legend that during the mid-eighteenth century the citizens of Chester had seen strange lights burning persistently on Oak Island by night. It was also darkly hinted that two Chester fishermen who had rowed across to investigate had never been seen again.
Oak Island does seem to possess an atmosphere of subtle mystery and intrigue. Looking out across Smith’s Cove, where the fan-shaped entrance to one of the sinister flood tunnels still lies somewhere beneath the artificial beach, the researcher ponders over who might have constructed this whole weird system, and why. Driving by moonlight across the 200-metre causeway separating Oak Island from Crandall’s Point on the mainland is also an evocative experience.
But “atmospheres” are notoriously deceptive and subjective. Whether the feeling of enigmatic mystery in the air of Oak Island has any objective reality, or whether the visitor’s knowledge of the island’s strange history generates the atmosphere is an argument which is not easy to resolve.
What other background information might contribute usefully and relevantly to an analysis of the mystery of the Oak Island Money Pit? How much attention needs to be paid to the climate, the geography, and geology of Nova Scotia itself to gain a fair background for studying the Money Pit?
Just as Rome and Constantinople were traditionally built on seven hills, so Nova Scotia is built on five; five upland areas and five lowlands. The raised areas are based on hard, crystalline rocks and consist of: the Southern Upland, which doesn’t rise above 600 feet; the narrow, flat-topped North Mountain, which reaches about the same height and runs alongside the Bay of Fundy; the Cobequid Mountains, which are nearly 300 feet higher and cross Cumberland County; the Pictou and Antigonish Highlands; and, fifth, the Cape Breton Highlands which reach approximately 1,200 feet. The five lowland areas have soft, sedimentary rocks beneath them.
The mineral wealth of Nova Scotia includes lead, zinc, silver, and copper in the Bathurst area of New Brunswick, and coal in the northern part of Cape Breton Island.
Nova Scotia must also be considered as a mass of lakes, streams, and unusually short rivers — while the subterranean water courses may be larger and more extensive than is generally realized. The curiously named Lake Bras d’Or (Golden Arm Lake) on Cape Breton Island, for example, is saline.
The Nova Scotian climate is a strange mixture in that it is both continental and oceanic. The southwest coast in particular trends to be mild and wet, and its average temperature is roughly five degrees warmer than the average interior temperature (approximately 45 degrees Fahrenheit and 40 degrees Fahrenheit respectively). The upland temperatures can range from 95 degrees Fahrenheit in summer down to 35 degrees of frost in winter — a remarkably wide range of 125 degrees Fahrenheit. There’s an annual rainfall of between 40 and 55 inches, and fog can hide the southern coasts for as many as ninety days a year. There are upwards of 50,000 acres of tidal marshland in Nova Scotia, and it’s particularly interesting to note that it was the Acadians who began creating dikes around the turn of the seventeenth century.
With its fogs and sinister tidal marshes, the Nova Scotian coast was a haven for pirates, and Mahone Bay itself was notorious for its pirates, privateers and buccaneers right up until the early years of the eighteenth century. The scores of scattered islands there provided ideal screening and camouflage from both sea and land. Expert anthropological opinion