Oak Island Money Pit
Oak Island is a small, forested island in Mahone Bay off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. Since the 1800s, word had quickly spread that this island held buried treasure in a pit or shaft. After news spread of a possible treasure just waiting to be claimed, as many as six men lost their lives and many more wasted their own fortunes in trying to reach this buried wealth. The Oak Island shaft rightfully earned its name as the “Money Pit”.
The original story of the Oak Island shaft surfaced in a 1795 newspaper in which Daniel McGinnis was exploring the island and found an unusual circular depression in the ground with a pulley attached to a tree limb above it. McGinnis enlisted the help of some friends to excavate the loose soil under the pulley. As they dug down they came across some flagstone and once they reached 10 feet deep, a layer of logs was discovered. They were certain that this shaft was resting place of buried pirate treasure.
It wasn’t until 1810 that McGinnis and his friends gained help from the Onslow Company owned by a wealthy businessman from the mainland to aggressively dig this shaft. As they continued to dig deeper, they came across oak beams, coconut fiber, clay, charcoal and mysterious markings around the shaft. Once they dug down to 80 feet, they had thought they reached a wooden chest, but their excitement quickly faded as the shaft flooded over night and was unable to be drained. It was later assumed that the people responsible for this hidden treasure created some type of a water trap supplied from nearby Smith’s Cove to prevent looters from gaining access to the treasure.
Subsequent digs managed to obtain sheep skin parchment, tools and a most interesting find at the depth of 90 ft, a simple code written on a stone tablet, which was decoded to read “Forty Feet Below Two Million Pounds Are Buried”.
The Truro Company took over from where the Onslow Company eventually quit. Allegedly, a drill was used to obtain core samples in which links of a gold chain were recovered, but each additional attempt to reach the fabled treasure ended in failure.
In the 1900s, the intriguing possibility of a buried treasure in the Money Pit attracted such famous people to excavate it such as Franklin D. Roosevelt and actor John Wayne. In 1971, a video camera lowered into the shaft supposedly imaged a severed hand and a chest. Since the 1971 video footage, the shaft has collapsed and exploration has since ceased.
In 1995, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute conducted a survey of the area and concluded that natural factors were responsible for the layering of various stone and logs in the “shaft”. Furthermore, the various efforts to dig other diagonal and parallel shafts near the original site have made it difficult to determine which shaft was the original “Money Pit”. To compound the issue,claims made of recovered gold links, coded tablets and murky video footage have either come from secondary sources or of dubious origin.
Sources:
The Oak Island Treasure, Myth and Mystery, Lost Histories
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