The Buried Treasure of Oak Island

In 1795, a young man from Nova Scotia named Daniel McGinnis set out to find adventure on Oak Island, one of over 350 tiny islands in Mahone Bay. He did not dig up any buried treasure, but he did uncover a mystery that continues to haunt us today. Although Oak Island was uninhabited, people had been there, as shown by a weatherworn pulley hanging from the oak tree that gives Oak Island its name.

A depression in the ground under the tree made him think that a hole (later known as the Money Pit) had been dug there. Surely, that was enough evidence of a mystery to convince a young adventurer that Oak Island must be hiding a buried treasure.

The next day, he returned with two friends and dreams of sailing from Oak Island in a boat full of unburied treasure, the mystery solved.

They found a shaft, and a little over a yard down, a layer of flagstones. Further down, they found log beams, and other platforms, but no buried treasure. They raised what money they could to purchase better equipment, but Oak Island never gave up its mystery.

In 1803 a local doctor and some friends got wind of the mystery and got involved with work and funds. Ninety feet down, the soil of Oak Island grew wetter and wetter. Finally, they reached what they felt would be the last platform above the buried treasure.

They took off the next day, to celebrate breaking the mystery, and more importantly, to figure out how they would spend the buried treasure, once they removed it from the Money Pit of Oak Island. When they returned to work, the shaft was flooded to within thirty feet from the top.

Bailing and pumping did nothing to lower the water level in the Money Pit. So, after abandoning this attempt to find the buried treasure, they returned to Oak Island two years later and dug a shaft parallel to the original, planning to dig from the bottom of the new shaft to the buried treasure at the bottom of the first shaft. But the wall of earth between the two shafts collapsed, and the mystery of Oak Island remained unsolved.

No one has gotten any closer to Oak Island's buried treasure since that failed attempt in 1805. A few details of the mystery have been unraveled. A canal runs from the bay, five hundred feet away, to the Money Pit.

This meant that once the logs, flagstones, and other filler were removed, there was nothing to keep the water out of the Money Pit. No buried treasure has been taken from Oak Island, but tantalizing bits of jewelry, wooden sea chests, coins, and even a scrap of parchment have kept the mystery alive.

It is no mystery that whoever left whatever the buried treasure is, they went to a great deal of trouble to make sure that it stayed on the bottom of the Money Pit on Oak Island.

The mystery of who buried the treasure has taken on a life of its own, with suggestions ranging from Native Americans hiding ancient treasures or British forces trying to keep their chests of royal gold away from the American forces. Since 1937, there has been a growing belief that the infamous pirate, Captain William Kidd, used Oak Island created the Money Pit to hide his booty, although like the other theories, it has very little tangible evidence to support it.

In 1965 an American geologist brought a crane to Oak Island to dig a hole one hundred feet wide and deeper than any previous digs. He found no buried treasure, however, just debris from previous expeditions, which have left Oak Island looking as if it were made of Swiss cheese. Five years later, the Triton Alliance, an investment group, undertook a geological study of Oak Island and later began what they call Borehole 10-X, a Money Pit which has swallowed even more money, yielding only more bits of metal and wood and an occasional scrap of broken china. The mystery of Oak Island has withstood such modern technology.

Many people who have lived near Oak Island all their lives believe that the poorly planned expeditions and uncoordinated digs of almost two centuries have actually helped protect the buried treasure (if, indeed, there is any buried treasure) because now the whole island has become a Money Pit, so that it will now be even more difficult to solve the mystery.

Perhaps some day, human ingenuity and modern technology will reach the buried treasure, and the mystery of Oak Island will be solved, but for now, it seems that the mysterious owners of the buried treasure have nothing to worry about.