Many have grappled with trying to explain the mystery of Oak Island, but none have been able to find out what’s at the bottom of the Money Pit.
Oak Island Money Pit - The Last Great Unsolved Mystery Toggle navigation Oak Island Money Pit The Mystery Books Videos YouTube Resources Contact Oak Island Money Pit The Last Great Unsolved Mystery By Ashley Morgan | 678 Comments READ THE STORY 18.1K 1518 694 Welcome fans of The Curse of Oak Island on History Channel!This website is for sale. If you're interested in purchasing it, please contact us. Revealing the Mystery If someone were to claim they knew a story that involved the Holy Grail, a band of pirates, William Shakespeare, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Edgar Allan Poe, you might think the tale was a riddle or a fanciful movie script. However, one particular site in Canada holds a history that brings together all of these elements and more. Located off the shores of Nova Scotia, along Canada's Atlantic coast, Oak Island is among approximately 360 islands dotting Mahone Bay. To the casual observer, the 140-acre island appears like many in this part of the province. Rocks and sand skirt the perimeter of the landmass while native forest and brush cover much of its interior. At first glance, the seemingly mundane island conceals any evidence of historical importance. However, appearances can be deceiving. Despite the natural scenery and serene setting of Oak Island, the story of this island's past is replete with mystery, intrigue and even tragedy. The potency of the story that follows has captured the human imagination and has driven men to their graves. From academics to adventurers, many have grappled with trying to explain the mystery, but none have been able to get to the bottom of the Money Pit of Oak Island. Location of Oak Island, Nova Scotia, Canada The Discovery By most accounts, the story of Oak Island's Money Pit begins in the summer of 1795 when a teenager named Daniel McGinnis saw strange lights on an island offshore from his parent's house. According to author Lee Lamb, upon investigating the island for the source of the lights, McGinnis noticed a peculiar circular depression approximately 13 feet in diameter on the island's forest floor (2006). Looking around, McGinnis observed that a number of oak trees surrounding the depression had been removed. In addition, McGinnis saw that a block and tackle hung from a severed tree limb directly over the shallow hole. Although some researchers refute the presence of the block and tackle, whatever he witnessed that day convinced him that the scene was worth investigating. McGinnis decided to leave the island to enlist the help of two friends, John Smith and Anthony Vaughan. The following day the three teenage boys began enthusiastically excavating the curious site. Daniel McGinnis, John Smith and Anthony Vaughan begin digging in 1795. One of the reasons McGinnis, Smith and Vaughan were so excited to investigate a dirt depression on an otherwise nondescript island in eastern Canada can be found in an enticing chapter in Nova Scotia's history. As described by the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, the "Golden Age of Piracy" occurred between 1690 and 1730. At this time, Nova Scotia had only a few European settlements. With just over 200 nautical miles separating the remote bays of present-day Nova Scotia from the thriving commercial center of colonial Boston, pirates were known to frequent areas near Oak Island. The unpopulated wilderness of the region provided an abundance of natural resources to restock and repair vessels while its isolation proved an ideal place to harbor their vast misbegotten treasure. In fact, one notorious pirate, the infamous Captain William Kidd, admitted to burying an unspecified wealth of treasure in the area before his capture in 1699 (Conlin, 2007). Aerial shot showing the location of the Money Pit on Oak Island, NS. Causeway connecting it to the mainland was constructed in 1965. Initial Excavation Along with many residents in the eastern province, the three boys digging on Oak Island must have been aware of the fabled pirates and had notions of gold doubloons in mind. It wasn't long before the young excavators came across buried evidence to further convince their imaginations. Two feet beneath the topsoil, McGinnis and his friends uncovered a layer of flagstone extending across the surface of the opening (Crooker, 1993). Excitedly, the boys pulled the rock floor away from the pit to retrieve the golden bounty that must be hidden below. Unfortunately for them, the boys only discovered more dirt. Undeterred, they continued their excavation. Any treasure worth finding would certainly require more than two feet of digging. As the teenagers continued burrowing down, they followed the walls of the previous hole. In doing so, the boys found that the pit had narrowed to seven feet in diameter. They also noticed the work of their predecessors. Imprinted in the clay of the tunnel wall were the impressions of pickaxes. Had these marks been left by pirate laborers before securing their treasure underground? The adolescent explorers were determined to find out. At a depth of ten feet, the boys discovered a layer composed of rotting wood timbers. The timbers spanned the width of the hole, forming a wooden platform. The ends of the timbers had been driven into the sides of the tunnel wall to firmly anchor the structure. This deliberate barrier and the hollow sound beneath the timbers must have confirmed to the boys that vast wealth was close at hand. The team eagerly continued their efforts, removing the timbers to claim their treasure. Just as before, the enthusiastic excavators were again disappointed. After taking out the barrier, the boys found a two-foot pocket of air followed by soil that had settled below (Lamb, 2006). McGinnis and his friends carried on undeterred. Tunneling down to approximately 20 feet, the boys encounter another level of wood timbers. Nevertheless, they continued toiling in the pit, removing one barrier after another in hopes to claim their mysterious reward. When the teenagers pulled away the second platform of wood timbers only to find another layer of soil staring back at them, the team decided to suspend their work at the site (Harris, 1967). Several weeks later, the young fortune-seekers returned to the pit with their pickaxes and shovels. However, the second attempt for the boys proved similar to their initial outing. After hours of laboring beneath the June sun, removing ten more feet of dirt from the deepening hole, they were once again confronted by a table of thick timbers embedded in the clay of the tunnel wall (Harris and MacPhie, 2005). McGinnis and his companions continued down five more feet before defeat set in and the boys stopped their treasure hunt. Foundation of house probably built by Daniel McGinnis' family in 1800's. The Onslow Company Although the first attempt proved fruitless, the legend of Oak Island's Money Pit still had many secrets to reveal. Perhaps too convinced of treasure to give up the pursuit, the eldest of the excavators, John Smith, purchased the lot containing the intriguing cavernous pit that same month. However, interest in the peculiar hole was not limited to the teenaged McGinnis, Vaughan and Smith. In fact, more mature and experienced minds would soon succumb to the prospect of wealth contained in those shadowy depths. According to Harris, in 1803, Simeon Lynds joined the excursion. Lynds was the grandson of a pioneering family from Ireland who settled in Nova Scotia in 1761 (1967). Simeon's father, Thomas Lynds fell in love and married Simeon's mother, Rebecca Blair in 1774 (1873). Rebecca was the fifth daughter of Captain William Blair, a Scottish immigrant who had moved his family north from New England to help suppress the French forces at Louisbourg. Perhaps it was his maternal grandfather's daring nature coursing through his veins when, in 1803, the pit's discoverers convinced Simeon Lynds to continue the hunt. Lynds was a relative of the Vaughan family and was listed as a "wheel-wright," in historical records. To assist with his new adventure, Lynds enlisted the help of Colonel Robert Archibald, Captain David Archibald and Sheriff Thomas Harris. Together, the group established the Onslow Company, a professional venture with the sole purpose of recovering the Oak Island treasure. The renewed effort began in earnest in the summer of 1804. That year, the team returned to the pit for what they hoped would be the third and final attempt at uncovering the supposed riches. Lynds and his men started by removing the backfill from the initial excavation. Just as the first team indicated, the Onslow Company noticed marks in the clay walls nearly every ten feet where the wooden timbers had been removed. After the first 25 feet, the excavators found themselves in unexplored territory. From this point, every shovelful came with the promise of discovery. At a depth of 30 feet, one of the laborers hit a solid object. Removing the soil, the crew found that another timber level had been installed inside the tunnel (Lamb, 2006). This time, however, the men noticed the remnants of charcoal scattered around the platform. Baffled, the crew disposed of the wooden barrier and continued their search. Digging 10 more feet, the enthusiastic men of the Onslow Company found themselves standing on yet another shelf of horizontal timbers. This time, rather than charcoal, the diggers observed a sap-like substance along the seams between the logs. Whatever was stored beneath must have been worth the trouble of encapsulating the tunnel for protection. The men resumed their efforts, encouraged by the added elements of charcoal and sealant. Burrowing another 10 feet, the team encountered something they would have never thought possible. Atop another platform of timbers were scattered the fibers of coconut shells (Harris and MacPhie, 2005). To the men, this development seemed to underscore the importance of their efforts. Although the coconut fibers themselves held no commercial value, there were two reasons the Onslow Company crew considered the debris reassuring. First, as could be assumed, coconuts are not native to Canada. The most likely source of this tropical fiber would have been somewhere in the Caribbean. Secondly, the reason the material probably came from the Caribbean, was that, in a time of long voyages on the high seas, coconut fibers were used to secure and protect valuable cargo. The matted brown fiber could mean a hoard of precious goods was stashed deeper within the pit. The men wasted no time in dispatching the floor to claim their bounty. To their dismay, the pit was not yet ready to reward the anxious treasure hunters. From the 60-foot depth where the coconut fiber was found, it would take the men another 30 feet of digging and the removal of two additional timber barriers before they would make a significant discovery. There, at a depth of 90 feet beneath the surface of the tiny Canadian island, the weary team of fortune seekers uncovered their first precious stone. What the men found was not a diamond or any type of gem, but a large square-cut stone tablet. On the face of the heavy stone was an inscription of strange symbols. Each character of the mysterious text consisted of a unique combination of lines, arrows and dots. Despite its significant weight, the crew hoisted the rock from the pit for further examination (Lamb, 2006). Replica of stone found at 90 feet in the Money Pit. © Ken Boehner For decades, the encoded message on the face of the rock was thought to be indecipherable. During this time it was rumored that Smith used it as a fireback in his fireplace, while others claim it was used as a doorstep to a Halifax bookbinder's shop or possibly even displayed in the window as an enticement to potential expedition financiers. It was not until the 1860s that an academic was able to examine the symbols and provide a credible translation. Although this fact, like many involving Oak Island, remains disputed, many believe that Dalhousie University Professor of Languages James Leitchi successfully decoded the tablet's inscription. Borrowing a page from Edgar Allen Poe's "The Gold Bug," Leitchi employed a technique termed simple substitution cipher whereby unique symbols correlate to specific letters in a given alphabet. For example three vertical lines similar to this "|||" might substitute for the letter "E." Once a rational scheme is set for the symbols present in the code, a context for each letter can be constructed and meaning is extracted from the text. Applying this approach to cryptography, Leitchi resolved that the stone from the Money Pit read (Lamb, 2006): "Forty Feet Below, Two Million Pounds Are Buried." Since the tablet was discovered 90 feet below ground, excavators subscribing to Leitchi's translation set their sights on a depth of 130 feet. Given the verbiage used in the text, members of this school also believed the treasure to have been buried by someone of British origin with a flair for the eccentric. To those who hold dearly to legends of pirates and their tie to buried gold, Captain Kidd seemed a likely candidate to construct the elaborate pit and create the mysterious stone. With the stone out of their path, the men of the Onslow Company resumed the excavation. Expecting to dig 10 more feet before hitting another timber structure, the team was surprised when, at a depth of 98 feet, they found their next wooden obstacle. At that point, the men were exhausted from a strenuous day. The workers decided to make one last cursory attempt before resting. Rather than go through the effort of removing the logs, one of the workers used a crowbar to probe between the timbers to ensure treasure was not immediately beneath their feet. The metal rod pierced a sealed seam between two of the timbers to feel for any potentially valuable objects (Crooker, 1993). With no evidence of impending fortune, the team retired for the day. When the members of the Onslow Company returned to the site, they found themselves confronted by another unexpected challenge. It turns out that while the team took time to rest, much of the cavernous pit had filled with water. Now, the prospect of retrieving any sort of riches lay nearly 63 feet beneath a watery chamber. The startled crew desperately began filling buckets to drain the pit. Feverishly, they scooped away the cloudy water without success. It soon occurred to the hapless crew that every time water was removed from the well, it was somehow instantly replaced. Colonel Robert Archibald noted this peculiar situation and temporarily seized operations at the site (Lamb, 2006). The Onslow Company promptly realized that the sophistication of the pit would require more than mere brute force to burrow past levels of dirt and timber. Somehow, the tunnel had been engineered to toy with men as they sought her fortune. Staring into a well that could hold unfathomable fortunes, the members of the Onslow Company refused to admit defeat. Instead, in autumn of 1804, the group decided to employ technology to overcome the pit's defiance. To this end, they hired Mr. Carl Mosher and his mechanical pump to clear the tunnel and allow the men to resume their work. Immediately after Mosher installed and operated the pump, the company appeared to have finally earned a streak of luck. The water level slowly began to recede down the clay wall. Perhaps the water was a minor stumbling block that would only serve to rinse the gold coins before their retrieval (Crooker, 1993). Then, at a depth of approximately 90 feet, just eight feet shy of where they had previously left off, Mosher's water pump failed along with the excavators' short-lived fortune. Without the pump functioning, water steadily returned to the pit, dissolving the crew's hopes of a hasty solution. The team decided to retreat and regroup. The following year, the Onslow Company returned to the pit with a new idea to capture the treasure. Despite the first two attempts depleting much of company's financial resources, the men believed this new approach would more than pay for past failures. Rather than concentrate on the pit itself, in 1805 the Onslow Company determined that they could bypass all of the tunnel's snares by simply avoiding the pit altogether (Lamb, 2006). Their revised strategy included excavating a shaft parallel to the pit. At about 110 feet, once the men were beneath the supposed water trap, they would tunnel over towards the pit to collect the treasure and return to the surface. The crew would be back on the mainland, celebrating their newfound wealth in a matter of weeks. The site of the auxiliary tunnel was situated 14 feet southeast of the original hole (Harris and MacPhie, 2005). Eagerly, the men set to work, their shovels flinging dirt from the promising new shaft. It was not long, however, before the promise faded to disillusionment. At a depth of just 12 feet, water found its way into the new tunnel. With dampened spirits and drained finances, the Onslow Company finally was forced to accept defeat. Seeking Captain Kidd's treasure on Oak Island in the 1800's. The Truro Company Following the Onslow Expedition, the strange site on Oak Island lay undisturbed and submerged beneath volumes of water for nearly 40 years. Then, in 1845, fervor for the entombed mystery was reawakened. That year a member of the original dig, Anthony Vaughan, helped form the Truro Company. Together with John Gammell, Adams Tupper, Robert Creelmand, Esq., Jotham McCully and James Pitblado, the treasure-seeking Vaughan anticipated success. Also joining the Truro Company efforts was the brother of the Onslow Company's Simeon Lynds, Dr. David Barnes Lynds (Harris, 1967). With this team, the Truro syndicate represented an impressive collection of qualified and respected individuals. In spite of the ambition surrounding the newly formed Truro Company, the men did not start further exploration until 1849. With improved funding and organization, the Truro Company began the fourth attempt at solving the Oak Island mystery. In the summer of 1849, the team arrived at the site and continued where the Onslow Company left off; removing water from the pit. After two weeks of laboring against the debris and water of the pit, the crew achieved a depth of 86 feet. These gains, however, did not last. The next day, workers were perplexed to find that the surface of the water had returned to 60 feet (Crooker, 1993). Decidedly more prepared than their predecessors, the Truro Company was determined to reveal the tunnel's contents, even if human hands did not make the initial discovery. Seeing that the water had returned, the men fashioned a wood platform that they mounted over the mouth of the pit. Through an opening in the floor of the structure, the men plunged a hand-operated auger into the waters below. They hoped this contraption would give them an idea of what was buried beyond the 98-foot deep timber floor. The results of the remote probing could not have been anticipated by even the most optimistic among them (Harris and MacPhie, 2005). According to Crooker, the auger initially only confirmed information the men already knew (1993). At a depth of about 98 feet, the auger came in contact with a layer of spruce approximately 6 inches deep. Following the log surface, the auger sunk through one foot absent of any material. This was consistent with Vaughan's past experiences with the pit. After every wooden platform, the excavators found a pocket of air from dirt that had settled below. To Vaughan and the others, it would follow that after another nine feet; the auger would again reach a wood surface and repeat the process. Surprisingly, the hand-powered drill delivered very different results. Beneath the layer of settled dirt, the Truro Company noticed that the auger then penetrated a series of strata consisting of 4 inches of oak, followed by 6 inches of spruce, before entering seven feet of cla… truncated (55,112 more characters in archive)