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| Photo of the pit |
The Oak Island Money Pit was discovered in 1795, by a young man, named Daniel McGinnis. Daniel had gone on a fishing trip and wound up exploring Oak Island. During his exploration he found a tree that had strange markings on it. In fact, the tree looked as if it had been used to anchor a pulley device. He also noticed sunken earth beneath the tree. Daniel decided to return to Oak Island the following day, with two friends and some tools for digging. They began to dig at the site and soon realized that they had found something quite interesting. That something would come to be known as the Oak Island Money Pit.
The first thing that Daniel and his two friends discovered was a layer of carefully placed flagstones. This was followed by a layer of logs. The hole and its components eventually proved too much for the young men and their simple tools and so they returned home empty-handed. They decided that they would have to return to the site. However they did not return to the Oak Island Money Pit for another eight or nine years.
The trio eventually joined up with a local man who was willing to fund the digging at Oak Island. When Daniel and the group returned, they found the Money Pit exactly as they had left it. When they began digging again, they discovered even more layers of logs and they also found layers of putty and coconut fiber.
Underneath these new obstacles, the men found something new in the Money Pit. Beneath the layers of logs was a stone that was engraved with symbols that none of the crew understood. Instead of attempting to decipher the stone they continued digging. Underneath the slab the Money Pit was filled with even more logs. Finally, they broke through the last layer of logs to find that the Money Pit was filled with ocean water. The men were unable to keep the pit from filling with more water, no matter what they did. Apparently the Money Pit of Oak Island was a sophisticated booby trap.
Daniel and the others gave up on the Money Pit for awhile, when it became apparent that no amount of pumping would clear the shaft of water. When they returned after a year, they had a new plan. They had decided to build a secondary shaft adjacent to the first. They did this in the hopes that they would be able to drain the water from the Money Pit into this new hole. The project failed when the second hole filled with water and collapsed. The level of water in the Money Pit remained unchanged. Finally, the group abandoned the project for good.
A man later translated the stone that the men had found. He claimed that the inscription said Forty Feet Below Two Million Pounds Are Buried. Supposedly the stone was lost in 1912, so there have been no further attempts to translate it and no photos of the stone exist.
Since that time, several attempts have been made to find out what lies at the bottom of the Money Pit. None have succeeded. It has since been discovered that the Money Pit itself is a rather ingenious booby trap. Whoever created it used the natural resources of the island to build a shaft that is, thus far, impossible to drain. Apparently there is a tunnel that leads from the pit to a nearby beach. In the 1960's four men were killed by fumes in this tunnel while they were attempting to discover how to stem the flow of water.
Theories abound about what may be buried in the Money Pit. Some people even believe that the Money Pit is a natural occurrence and that the whole thing is a misunderstanding. Others believe that the pit contains William Kidd’s treasure or Marie Antoinette’s royal jewels. The fact is that we may never know, because digging at the site has proved difficult and dangerous. There have been no excavations recently.
Sources
Oak Island Treasure, retrieved 7/4/09, oakislandtreasure.co.uk/content/section/5/35
Oak Island Money Pit, retrieved 7/4/09, theunexplainedmysteries.com/oak.html
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