The causeway to Oak Island carries traffic again. Cars cross it, park in a lot on the island, and their passengers walk into a museum and a shop that had been shut for six years.
Most of what is published online still has the island as private property, closed to the public, reachable only on a booked tour but that is no longer the case. Your author was there in July 2026, and saw it for myself. The parking lot was full and people were enjoying the museum (which is called the Oak Island Interpretive Center) and the Treasure Shop.
Open after a Six-Year Closure
Guided tram tours ran on Oak Island for years before the pandemic. Oak Island Tours Inc., the company through which Rick Lagina and Marty Lagina hold their stake in the island, released roughly 10,000 tickets a year in a single online batch, and they reportedly sold out in under three minutes. Charles Barkhouse, the island's historian and a cast member on the show, was the guide most visitors remember.
In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic stopped tourism across Nova Scotia. The tours ended and the museum closed. What nobody expected was how long the closure would hold. The island stayed shut to the public between 2021 and 2025, six seasons in all. Oak Island is an active excavation site as well as a working television production, and running visitor access alongside heavy equipment across 140 acres proved difficult to reconcile.
But that has now changed.
Oak Island and the Tourism Boom→
The Causeway Carries Public Traffic
The causeway connecting Crandall's Point to Oak Island is open. There is no gate to negotiate and no permission to arrange in advance. Drive across, follow the road, and park in the lot on the island.
The causeway is single lane. Signs at the approach ask drivers to reduce speed and use caution. Sightlines across the water are short, and the surface is narrow enough that two vehicles cannot pass.
For most of the show's run the causeway was where the public stopped. It now carries visitor traffic onto the island.
The Museum and the Treasure Shop
Two buildings are open to walk-in visitors 7 days a week. The island's museum, formally the Oak Island Interpretive Centre, holds the displays: maps, documents, and cases of recovered material covering the search from the 1795 discovery forward. Admission is five dollars per person, and parking is included.
The Treasure Shop sits about fifty metres away in its own building and carries official Curse of Oak Island merchandise, books, and items made from Oak Island wood. Sales from the shop are directed back into the visitor operation and the museum.
Museum hours are Monday to Friday from 10:00am to 5:00pm, and Saturday and Sunday from 8:30am to 6:00pm. The museum and shop operate on a longer calendar than the tram tours described below, so it is possible to visit both outside the tour season.
The Money Pit Express Tram Tour
Everything past the museum and the treasure shop is reached on a booked tour. The tour runs aboard the Money Pit Express, a covered and accessible tram, and takes about two hours. The route follows Centre Road past the Money Pit area, Smith's Cove, the swamp, and the other locations that appear regularly on the show, with narration from a guide who knows the ground.
The 2026 season runs from May 2 to October 31. Departures are Wednesdays at 6:30pm, and Saturdays and Sundays at 9:00am, 12:30pm and 3:30pm.
Tickets are 99 dollars for adults, 35 dollars for children aged 6 to 12, and free for children under 5. Booking is through Oak Island Legend at oakislandlegend.com. Advance booking is required, and visitors are asked to arrive thirty minutes before departure. Tours run in rain as well as sun, and refunds are issued only when a tour is cancelled for extreme weather. Anyone needing accessible seating should say so at the point of booking rather than on the day.
Demand has again outstripped capacity. In July 2026 the operator reported tours fully booked with a waitlist in place. Anyone building a trip around the tram should book well ahead rather than arriving and hoping for a seat.
Where Visitors Can and Cannot Go
On foot, visitors reach the museum and the treasure shop, and no further. Everything beyond those two buildings requires a booked tour.
Active excavation and filming areas are closed at all times, with or without a ticket. The Money Pit area, Smith's Cove and the working sites across the island carry heavy machinery, open shafts and unstable ground, and they are not places to wander into.
Filming for Season 14 of The Curse of Oak Island ran through the summer of 2026, with the premiere listed for November 3. The island being open to visitors and the island being an active production site are both true at the same time, which is exactly why the line is drawn where it is. Visitors sometimes cross paths with people working on the search. It is not something the tour offers or can arrange.
Seeing Oak Island from the Water
There is a third route, and it does not involve the causeway. Salty Dog Sea Tours runs narrated boat trips around the island from the Oak Island Marina aboard a covered tritoon, taking in the shoreline sites from the water along with the wider Mahone Bay and Chester area. Tony Sampson, who owns the operation, has worked as both cast and crew on the series.
For anyone who misses a tram booking, the water route is the closest alternative view of the ground.
Getting There
Oak Island lies in Mahone Bay, on the south shore of Nova Scotia, in Lunenburg County. Chester is the nearest village of any size, Western Shore faces the island directly, and Halifax is roughly an hour away by road.
From Halifax, take Highway 103 southwest and leave at Exit 9 toward Gold River. Coming up from the South Shore, take Exit 10 toward Mahone Bay and Martins River. Either route joins Crandall Point Road, which leads to the causeway, with the parking lot immediately across.
Two practical notes from being there. The site is coastal and exposed, so the weather turns faster than a forecast suggests, and the tram is covered rather than heated. And the parking lot is finite: on a weekend with three tour departures and walk-in traffic, arriving early is the difference between parking on the island and parking somewhere else.
For what the tour route passes, the interactive map marks each location by name. The Artifact Vault catalogues the finds, a number of which are displayed in the museum. For how a private island became one of the most requested destinations in the province, see Oak Island and the Tourism Boom.
Sources
Operator information: Oak Island Legend, tour booking pages and published operator notices, July 2026. Hours, admission, tour times and pricing are the operator's own published figures and are subject to change without notice. Confirm before travelling.
Tourism listings: Tourism Nova Scotia listings for the Oak Island Interpretive Center and Salty Dog Sea Tours, consulted July 2026.
Firsthand: site visit, Oak Island, July 2026.
Access details on this page were accurate in July 2026 and are reviewed each season. Last update [lastupdate].
