Sam Smith’s Tavern – Great Island, Wellfleet

Dark Tales unfolds in a real landmark on Great Island in Wellfleet — Sam Smith’s Tavern. Built around 1690 and destroyed by fire in the 1740s, the tavern once welcomed whalers with flip, toddies, and smoke-thick air. Archaeologists Erik Ekholm and James Deetz excavated the site in the late 1960s, uncovering pipe stems, oyster shells, and whalebone scraps — small echoes of a vanished world. In the play, these ruins become a place where time folds, and where the people and spirits of Cape Cod gather to tell their tales.