The 57-hectare privately owned island in Lunenburg County, Oak Island is located on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. What made this island incredibly popular are the theories about possible buries artifacts and treasure.

Explorations and excavations on the island started in the 1850s. There are several areas of interest on Oak Island, including, Nolan’s Cross, Money Pit, a triangle-shaped swamp, and the beach at Smith’s Cove. Let’s take a closer look at the latter area.

Smith’s Cove became an area of interest in 1965 when Robert Dunfield claimed that the Money Pit was flooding. He believed that the source of the flood is the beach at Smith’s Cove. Even though this was only a personal belief, other treasure hunters immediately adopted the idea.

In 1971, Triton Company started excavations in the area and discovered matted organic material, an unusual antique wooden box, the remains of a ruler or framing square, and a wrought iron caulking tool. However, the reliability of these artifacts is questionable as they were discovered in a treasure hunt,not by an archaeological dig.

It has been discovered that Smith’s Cove and the Money Pit aren’t connected via a drainage system. However, the question of why there are man-made structures there remained. It has been suggested that they occurred with the production of salt from seawater. As a result, there is an artificial beach created by the cofferdam on Smith’s Cove. In 1850, a subterranean waterway was found in the area.

As Oak Island became a treasure hunters’ paradise, it is believed that all actual archaeology was distorted and it’s beyond recovery.

Smith’s Cove and its man-made beach, which was built as part of the elaborate flood-tunnel booby trap, is one of the most photogenic vistas on Oak Island.

The team of The Curse of Oak Island, which is a television series, discovered a Medieval cross in the mud around rocks in Smith’s Cove. This cross is believed to prove that the Knights Templar visited Nova Scotia.



