Oak Island
Oak Island is one of 300 islands located in Mahone Bay, which is on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, Canada. The 140 acre island rises to a maximum of 35 feet above sea level and is known around the world as the location of the famous Money Pit. The Money Pit is the site of numerous excavations in the 19th and 20th Century to recover treasure believed by many to be buried there.
The failure of these attempts has made the term "money pit" a synonym for a project which consumes vast amounts of funds without producing a tangible result.
In 1795 a teenager, Daniel McGinnis, apparently discovered a circular depression in the ground with a tree nearby which had apparently had its branches chopped to support a pulley. With some other friends he excavated the depression and discovered a layer of flagstones a few feet below. As they dug down they discovered layers of logs at every ten feet or so. They abandoned the excavation at 30 feet, only to resume eight years later having set up a company, The Onslow Company, for the purpose of funding the recovery what they beleived to be treasure buried by pirates. They continued excavating down to 90 feet, finding layers of logs every ten feet, and apparently layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre at 40, 50 and 60 feet respectively.
At 90 feet they apparently recovered a stone bearing a an inscription of Greek characters. The pit subsequently flooded up to the 33 foot level pumping did not reduce the level, and the excavation was abandoned. The flooding was caused by the existance of a 500 foot tunnel from the pit leading to Smith's Cove nearby linking it to the sea.
A new company, the Truro Company, was formed in 1849 and re-excavated the shaft back down to 86 feet at which point it flooded again. They then drilled down into the ground below the bottom of the shaft. The drill allegedly passed through a spruce platform at 98 feet and then through 22 inches of what was described as "metal in pieces", 8 inches of oak, and then another 22 inches of metal followed by 4 inches of oak and another spruce layer. One account states that they recovered three small gold links of a chain from the drill. They attempted to prevent the pit frmo flooding by damming Smith's Cove and subsequently by excavating a shaft into the tunnel to block it and prevent the pit from flooding.
The next attempt was made in 1861 by a new company, the Oak Island Association, which apparently led to the collapse of the bottom of the shaft into a natural cave underneath it. The first fatality during the excavations occurred when the boiler of a pumping engine burst. The company gave up when they exhausted their funds in 1861.
Numerous further excavations were made by different people in 1866, 1893, 1909, 1931, 1936 and 1959, none of which were successful. In 1965 the area of the pit was dug out using a 70-ton digging crane to a depth of 140 feet and width of 100 feet; the soil removed being carefully examined.
Consequently the location of the original shaft is not precisely known. Another attempt was made by a company, the Triton Alliance, in 1976 with the excavation of 237 foot shaft supported by a steel caisson. Cameras lowered down it into a cave underneath allegedly recorded some chests, a "human hand" and some tools. The shaft subsequently collapsed and the excavation was again abandoned. They apparently paid for a survey by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in 1995 but the results were not published.
Various suggestions have been put forward that the pit might contain the riches of Captain Kidd, the lost manuscripts of Sir Francis Bacon, lost Incan treasure, the treasure and secrets remnants of exiled french Knights Templar concerning the Ark of the Covenant, and proof of Atlantis &mdash however there is no hard evidence to support any of the current theories.
Since the 1970s, few people have believed in any possible connection to pirates, due primarily to the massive scale of the subterranean construction.
According to the legend, the inability of excavators to gain access to the contents of the Pit is due to the presence of a complex flooding system which has foiled repeated excavation attempts over the last two centuries. Proponents claim that at least one of the beaches on the island is entirely artificial, acting as a giant sponge due to thick layers of coconut fibres beneath the surface (coconuts are not indigenous to Nova Scotia). Water is delivered into the Money Pit through an ingenious system of tunnels that delivers water from the "sponge" to drains in the side of the Pit.
A dissenting view offered by other researchers is that the entire tale is based on unverified folklore and entirely false. In support of this view is the fact that the earliest known written description of the Money Pit is a news article from the Liverpool Transcript newspaper in October 1862 (nearly 70 years after the legendary 1795 discovery), which included an oral account of the early years of the excavation attempts as told by several diggers. No corroborating material of any kind exists, thus the story told by these men is impossible to verify. It is not certain that any elements of the original tale (e.g. "oak platforms," an "inscribed stone," or even the tree) actually existed, and many details have changed repeatedly since this version was published. It is also certain that many elements found in the Oak Island story are commonly found in other tales of treasure and piracy (see the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Gold Bug" for an example), so it is not known whether several stories have been merged together to form what we now know as the Oak Island legend.
These same researchers note that the island lies on a glacial tumulus system and is underlain by a series of water-filled limestone caves; these offer an alternate explanation for the repeated flooding of the numerous (over sixty at last report) shafts dug around the original Pit. At present no one can identify the location of the first shaft since heavy excavation equipment was used to enlarge the diameter of the central area in the 1950s, destroying any remaining evidence.
Six diggers have lost their lives during past efforts to obtain whatever lies at the bottom of the Pit — if anything is there at all.
Oak Island is also well-known because Franklin Roosevelt, former President of the United States of America, was once a treasure hunter there, and kept up with news and developments for most of his adult life.