The Money Pit: 230 Years of Digging on Oak Island
In the summer of 1795, a teenager named Daniel McGinnis noticed a circular depression in the ground on Oak Island, a small wooded island off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada. With two friends, John Smith and Anthony Vaughan, he began to dig — and struck a layer of flagstones just below the surface, then what looked like platforms of old logs at regular depths. The boys gave up around thirty feet down, convinced they were inches from a pirate's fortune. The longest treasure hunt in history had begun.
Around 1802, the Onslow Company took over and reportedly reached a depth of about ninety feet, describing layers of charcoal, ship's putty and coconut fibre — a material whose nearest natural source lay well over a thousand miles to the south. The diggers also claimed to have raised a stone carved with strange symbols, later said to promise two million pounds buried forty feet below. The stone has long since vanished, with no reliable record of its inscription. Then, overnight, the shaft flooded with sixty feet of water, and no bailing could empty it.
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