The Les MacPhie research archives are a collection of structured PDF compilations assembled by Les MacPhie (Master of Engineering, Nova Scotia Technical College, 1964) and donated to the Chester Municipal Heritage Society. The archives consolidate the documentary record of Oak Island excavations from 1849 onward into searchable topical PDFs, with particular attention to geotechnical and engineering aspects of the search history.
The compilations include: an A00 tabulation index of all documents in the collection; a B-series covering early Oak Island documents from 1857 to 1867 (the Truro Syndicate and Oak Island Association period), with B09 and B10 covering the 1867 Oak Island Eldorado Company; a C-series covering twentieth-century geotechnical conditions and findings, with C02 through C10 treating specific excavation episodes between 1967 and 2005 at the Money Pit and Smith's Cove; a separate compilation on carbon dating consolidating laboratory results across the search history; and presentations MacPhie delivered to engineering audiences including the Canadian Geotechnical Society in 2008 and Independent Activities Period 2008 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The archives are made available online through two surfaces: the Blockhouse Investigations site at oakislandcompendium.ca, where the MacPhie compilations are presented under the Les MacPhie Archives section, and the CMHS portal at oakislandmystery.com, where they are presented alongside the D'Arcy O'Connor Fonds. Per MacPhie's wishes, the compilations are made available as downloadable PDFs.
Individual MacPhie compilations may be catalogued separately within this Research Archive when used as primary references.
What this source documents
Structured PDF compilations consolidating the Oak Island documentary record from 1849 onward, organized topically: A00 tabulation index of all documents in the collection; B-series compilations on the early treasure-hunting companies (Truro Syndicate, Oak Island Association, Oak Island Eldorado Company) covering 1857 to 1867; C-series compilations on twentieth-century geotechnical conditions at the Money Pit and Smith's Cove (1967 to 2005); carbon-dating compilation; engineering presentations to the Canadian Geotechnical Society (2008) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2008).
Why it matters
The MacPhie compilations are widely cited as a principal reference for Oak Island geotechnical and engineering history, including by the History Channel television series, where MacPhie has served as a technical advisor. For research questions involving the engineering interpretation of features encountered during the search (the Money Pit shaft and successive parallel shafts, the Smith's Cove drains and structures, the cofferdams, and the borehole and drilling work of the Triton and Lagina periods), the compilations are the necessary reference. The carbon-dating compilation in particular consolidates the laboratory results from across the search history into a single accessible document.