Some of you must know the whole story behind the Money Pit on Oak Island off the coast of Nova-Scotia, Canada. it has long been the site of much speculation for treasure hunters worldwide. Many theories are in existence as to what may actually lie in The Pit, ranging from a pirate’s bounty to the final resting place of the Holy Grail. One thing is certain, whatever is hidden, it was not intended to be discovered without a struggle. For over 200 years, treasure hunters have been trying to unearth its secret.

For those that dont know much about it,, i will try and explain it to you.
This is the pit diagram

It all began in 1795 when three young men landed on Oak Island. They noticed a tree with one limb sawed off and a depression in the ground underneath. This piqued their interest since the island was uninhabited. Underneath the sawed limb it looked as though something was buried there. They came back the next day and began to dig. The men came upon a layer of logs every ten feet that had been imbedded in the walls of a refilled pit. Some of the platforms were covered with charcoal while others were covered with a putty-like substance. At around thirty feet…they abandoned the dig until they could get help. Later they returned with people from the area and resumed the dig….to no avail….the treasure was much deeper than they could imagine.
Since that time, there have been many major digs in the area at a cost of well over 1 million dollars. In 1897, William Chappell struck iron, then cement, wood, and 32 inches of soft metal plus oak chips, coconut husk fiber, and a small piece of parchment with the letters "ui" "vi" or "wi". They appear to be written in India ink with a quill pen. These were found at the 153-foot level. In 1909, Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the age of 27, was part of an exploration group. He maintained a lifelong interest in Oak Island. Between 1967-1969 an exploratory group brought up oak buds, fragments of 16th century wood and a piece of antique brass. In 1972, a team lowered an underwater camera in a deep shaft close to the Money Pit…called Borehole 10X and photographed what appeared to be logs, sea chests, a human head and hand. This was photographed at 230 feet. To date, the treasure has not yet been uncovered.

One group, the Oak Island Exploration Company, has begun to address the problems associated with the excavation. These include: No direct plan supported by professional engineering studies, the inability to control underground flooding which is coming directly from the sea via two or more tunnels, insufficient funding to overcome unforeseen obstacles, and not understanding the island's underground structures.

In 1995 a team from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute spent two weeks on the island… while their report is confidential…it was by no means discouraging!!!

Since the time of the first exploration, six people have died attempting to uncover what some people believe to be buried treasure--Legend has it that seven people will die before it is found! And what is this treasure? Speculation ranges from Captain Kidd's treasure; a communal bank built by pirates; the hiding place for the treasure plundered by Sir Francis Drake from Spanish ships and settlements in the Caribbean; writings by Francis Bacon that would prove it was he that wrote Shakespeare's plays; Marie Antoinette's jewels; the lost treasure of Tumbez, Peru; and others.

One of the leading theories today is of the Knights Templar…and there certainly is evidence to support the theory!!! Whatever the treasure may or may not be, Oak Island is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure which combines the excitement of a treasure hunt with a major archeological dig!


CLIFFS: Burried treasure on Oak Island, people and company's have tried to recover the treasure now for over 100 years. They never got it. Alot of people have died trying to get to it. Fragments of paper with stuff written on it, gold chains and pottery have been brought up in hollow drill bits.

Whoever put the treasure there, also built a artifical beach around the island. It turns out that the pit designers had created a drain system, spread over a 145 foot length of beach, which resembled the fingers of a hand. Each finger was a channel dug into the clay under the beach and lined by rocks. The channels were then filled with beach rocks, covered with several inches of eel grass, and then covered by several more inches of coconut fiber. The effect of this filtering system was that the channels remained clear of silt and sand while water was still allowed to flow along them. The fingers met at a point inland where they fed sea water into a sloping channel which eventually joined the Money Pit some 500 feet away. Later investigations showed this underground channel to have been 4 feet wide, 2 1/2 feet high, lined with stone, and meeting the Money Pit between the depths of 95 to 110 feet.



-Matt-

 

Ya, I first learned of the Oak Island Pit from watching In Search Of.... with Lenoard Nimoy. I've always been facinated with it. GREAT picture of hte pit!