Oak Island Book is an online archive maintained by the family of James Troutman, who joined Robert Dunfield and Dan Blankenship as a one-third partner in the 1965 Oak Island expedition. Troutman brought a mining, engineering, and metal-detector background to the partnership and was on the island during a four-to-six-month period that coincided with the construction of the causeway from Crandall's Point and the introduction of heavy excavation equipment to Oak Island for the first time. Field activities during his tenure included the probing of older water sources and shafts, which produced encounters with box drains and wooden artifacts.
The family decided in 2014 to publicize approximately seventy documents Troutman assembled into a scrapbook during the expedition, plus film and photographs taken on site. Material on the site is organized by document and includes contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the Dunfield search, telegrams between the principals, sketches of features encountered (including a flood-drain sketch and field maps of the Money Pit area dated 1964 to 1966), and personal correspondence with Rupert Furneaux during the period of Furneaux's research for his 1972 book.
Several of the individual documents archived on Oak Island Book are catalogued separately in this Research Archive.
What this source documents
James Troutman scrapbook from the 1965-1966 Dunfield expedition: contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the Dunfield search (Chronicle Herald, Los Angeles Herald, The Register Costa Mesa, and others); telegrams between Troutman, Robert Dunfield, and Dan Blankenship; sketches of flood drains and Money Pit features; field maps; correspondence between Troutman and Rupert Furneaux during the period of Furneaux's research; photographs of the causeway construction, the Money Pit area, and Smith's Cove during the Dunfield era; personal field notes on box drains and wooden artifacts encountered during shaft probing.
Why it matters
For research questions concerning the 1965-1966 Dunfield expedition, the construction of the causeway, and the field conditions encountered during the introduction of heavy machinery to Oak Island, Oak Island Book preserves the contemporaneous documentary record of one of the three principals. Material in the Troutman scrapbook complements the Robert Dunfield papers held elsewhere, and the Furneaux correspondence on the site provides primary-source insight into the research process behind one of the canonical Oak Island books.