Folklore and coastal history · Little Egg Harbor

Tucker’s Island, the two cedars, and a treasure tale

Documented 1914 tale · Treasure unverified

A public-domain shore book places a purported treasure dig between two landmark cedars and the old Little Egg Harbor lighthouse. The island and its lighthouse were later lost to erosion, leaving a story whose printed details can still be tested.

What the old book says

George B. Somerville’s The Lure of Long Beach (1914), pp. 67–68, attributes an account to Beach Haven captains S. E. Holdzkom and John Marshall. According to its story, two mariners arrived by sloop, asked a life-saving crew about “The Two Cedars” and an old lighthouse, then dug at dawn between those landmarks. The crew reportedly saw an iron-bound chest from a distance before the strangers rowed away. Somerville says the crew later found a chest, a rusted cutlass and old coins by the trees. He placed the cutlass, at the time of writing, in the Asbury Park office of the life-saving-station superintendent. Somerville, The Lure of Long Beach (1914), pp. 67–68.

The passage has a useful tension: it says the strangers bundled their find into the yawl, yet also says the chest remained for the guards to find. Perhaps the book meant the contents went with them; it does not explain. It provides no dated station log, inventory, photograph of the cutlass or testimony from the life savers. It also gives no evidence linking the chest to Captain Kidd. The account documents a circulating coastal tale by 1914, not the recovery of pirate treasure.

The island under the story

Elsewhere in his book, Somerville describes Tucker’s Beach and its shifting connection to Long Beach. His 1914 landscape was temporary. NOAA uses Tucker’s Island to explain how longshore drift and storms reshape barrier islands: Beach Haven Inlet widened, erosion accelerated, and the remaining beach around the lighthouse was lost in 1927. Lighthouse histories place the structure’s collapse on October 12 of that year. The “two cedars” and the old light are historical clues in a changed shoreline, not stable coordinates to plot on a modern map. NOAA, Currents tutorial, pp. 13–14; Tucker’s Beach lighthouse history.

Explore the history on land

Tuckerton Seaport has a replica of the original Tucker’s Island lighthouse with exhibits on Tuckerton, folk art and lighthouses. Its published visitor address is 120 West Main Street, Tuckerton. That is the map pin and a useful place to compare the 1914 tale with the documented shoreline history. It is not the original island, a treasure location, or a surviving 1848 lighthouse. Check the Seaport’s current opening information before visiting.

Sources and research limits

George B. Somerville, The Lure of Long Beach (Long Beach Board of Trade, 1914), pp. 30–32 and 66–68 — Contemporary published version of the two-cedars tale and an earlier description of Tucker’s Beach; public domain. Text checked against the digitized book’s OCR, so unusual proper-name spellings need image verification.
NOAA National Ocean Service, Currents, pp. 13–14 — Barrier-island change and 1927 loss of the lighthouse.
Tuckerton Seaport, plan your visit — Museum address and explicit identification of its lighthouse as a replica.

A later version of the tale says a cutlass survives at a Beach Haven historical association; Somerville said it was in Asbury Park in 1914. Without an accession record or chain of custody, those claims cannot establish that the objects are the same. The exact historic digging spot has not been reconstructed from a period chart.