Oak Island
Located in Mahone Bay in Nova Scotia, the 140-acre Oak Island has been the site of a world-famous, 200-year-old treasure hunt centered around the infamous “Money Pit”. The legend began in 1795 when a sixteen-year-old Daniel McGinnis found a circular depression near a large oak tree on the island’s eastern end. It was well known that pirates had frequently visited the area and young McGinnis believed he had found a pirate’s cache. Returning with some friends, he dug down and found platforms of oak logs placed every 10 feet. While the boys ultimately stopped digging at 30 feet down, the legend of Oak Island’s Money Pit was born, setting off a continuous global fascination for well over 200 years.
In 1804, the Onslow Company resumed the dig at the Money Pit reaching a depth of roughly 90 feet, but the shaft was repeatedly flooded with seawater through hidden underground channels of flood tunnels. During the mid-19th century, a succession of companies took up the search including The Oak Island Association and Truro Company. These new efforts tried steam-driven pumps to deal with the flood tunnels and employed core drills to dig even deeper into the Money Pit. While no treasure was unearthed, they did recover some intriguing finds including traces of gold on a drill bit, chain links, and an inscribed stone bearing a cryptic cipher. Another major discovery was made by the Truro Company in 1850 when they uncovered five fan-shaped, rock-lined channels or box drains in Smith’s Cove not far from the Money Pit. It is believed that these box drains are the source of seawater to the flood tunnels that searchers keep encountering. During exploratory drilling operations in the Money Pit area in 1897, treasure hunter William Chappell struck what was interpreted as a sealed wooden and cement vault at a depth of approximately 153 feet.
In 1909, a young law clerk by the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt joined the Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Company as an investor. He visited Oak Island personally in the late summer of 1909 and participated in drilling, dynamiting, and sending divers down into the shaft, which ultimately reached 149 feet without finding treasure. Throughout his presidency, Roosevelt continued to monitor the modern excavations in the Money Pit and corresponded with fellow enthusiasts and engineers from the White House. The thing that makes Roosevelt’s interest in Oak Island even more intriguing is the fact that he was a 32nd Degree Mason. Over the history of Oak Island treasure hunt, there have been numerous treasure seekers and theories tied to Freemasonry.
In 1959, former motorcycle stuntman Robert Restall moved his wife and three children to Oak Island to fulfill his lifelong dream of searching for pirate treasure on the infamous island. The Restalls established a camp consisting of a 16’ x 16’ rough cabin near the Money Pit which they occupied year-round. The island had not been seriously worked in almost twenty years and there were numerous pits and shafts that where open. Restall theorized that the key to getting to the treasure was to cut off the source of water to the flood tunnels so he focused on digging a shaft near Smith’s Cove hoping to intersect the source. On the afternoon of August 17, 1965, Robert Restall was pumping water out of his shaft when he fell into the shaft while leaning over to check the water level. His oldest son, Robert Jr., who was working nearby saw his father fall and ran over to the shaft to assist him. As Bobby descended the ladder, he lost consciousness and fell into the water as well. Two other men who were working on the island, Karl Graeser and Cyril Hiltz, also attempted to descend the ladder to rescue the Restalls but they both met the same fate. A few other men present attempt to rescue the four, but they all retreated when they were overcome with noxious gas. The four men had all been rendered unconscious by poisonous gas that had filled the shaft and died when they drowned in the water filled shaft. A recovery of the bodies was conducted later in the day when a gas mask was located on the mainland: Oak Island had claimed four more victims to join the two that died in the late-1800s. Local legend warns that seven men must die before the treasure is found.
Following the Restall tragedy, a surveyor and treasure hunter named Dan Blankenship moved to Oak Island. For almost forty years, Blankenship lived on the island and conducted one of the most extensive searches yet. Using his surveying skills, he was the first to identify a series of large boulders that were in perfect alignment to form a cross which he named Nolan’s Cross. Blankenship believed that the cross was a clue to the location of the treasure. He also conducted searches in the island’s triangular-shaped swamp where he located timbers believed to have been from sailing ships. One theory that has floated around for decades is that a treasure ladened ship was intentionally sunk in the swamp to hide its location. Perhaps his single greatest achievement on Oak Island was constructing the 10x shaft which reached a depth of 235 feet. The 8-feet wide shaft was large enough for divers and remote cameras to explore the depths of the flooded shaft. On one dive into the bottom of the shaft, video appeared to show the presence of a box and human remains. Age was really the only thing that slowed Dan Blankenship’s treasure hunting and, as he got into his eighties, he turned to assisting the newest arrivals to the island.
In January 1965, Reader’s Digest published an article titled “Oak Island’s Mysterious Money Pit,” written by David Macdonald, which chronicled the legendary Nova Scotia treasure hunt. The article inspired an 11-year-old Rick Lagina to make pursuit of the mystery a life passion. In 2006, Rick and his younger brother Marty Lagina purchased a 50 percent stake in Oak Island Tours Inc., the holding company that owns the island and treasure hunting rights. The other fifty percent was retained by the Dan Blankinship and his family. The Lagina brothers brought some high-tech methodology to Oak Island based on Marty’s business success in the energy field. Over the twenty years of their presence on the island, they have used scientific methods such as ground penetrating radar, seismic scanning, core drilling, and lab analysis to search for the treasure versus the brute force methods of the past. There have also been some heavy excavations under their watch as well, but it has always been based on scientific data rather than a hunch.
In 2014, the Lagina brothers partnered with The History Channel to bring the treasure hunt to television in the hit series The Curse of Oak Island. Now in its thirteenth season, the series follows the Lagina brothers, their partners, and a team of experts as they continue the pursuit of the treasure, but also the history behind what happened on this infamous island. Some of their discoveries have included Roman coins, a Medieval lead cross, large amounts of timber beams over 100 feet underground, and the remains of a timber structure in Smith’s cove. Metal detecting and archeological work have uncovered strange stone foundations, a tar pine kiln (needed for ship building), a stone road leading out of the swamp, and thousands of artifacts which suggest a complex history on this tiny island. While water samples from the Money Pit have shown the presence of gold and silver, no treasure has been found on Oak Island.
Today, the island is open for guided tours on weekends during the summer months which is how I visited it. The tour begins at the Oak Island Interpretive Center which is a dedicated museum to the history of the treasure hunt over the centuries and houses some interesting artifacts. On the day of my visit, the tour guide was Charles Barkhouse who is actually one of the key cast members on the television series and he was joined by another cast member, Jack Begley, who offered his insights as well. The tram takes you along the road that passes the thirty-two property lots on the island and makes stops at Nolan’s Cross, the swamp, Money Pit, and Smith’s Cover where the guide narrates the history. I’ve long been a fan of The Curse of Oak Island so it was kind of a bucket list to visit the actual sights I’ve seen over the years on the show.
So, what is on Oak Island? Well, the short answer is that no one really knows. Legends says it is anything from pirate treasure to the religious artifacts from King Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. Personally, I think that whatever treasure was there is long gone. It is almost a certainty, given the pirate and privateer activity in the area, that there was treasure on the island at one time. The French had a long history of sailing in the waters around Oak Island as early as 1605. Their presence was followed up by the British, all who would have arrived from Europe on sailing vessels thousands of miles from home. It is my belief that one or both of these countries used Oak Island as a base to repair ships and mount other campaigns. I think this is the logical explanation for the structures and artifacts found on the island. However, it would be awesome if the searches prove me wrong.
