What is the secret of the “money pit” that has been searched for 300 years

Scotland’s history is extremely rich in pirate folklore. Since the 17th century, pirates have regularly visited this region, attracted by its hidden coves and small uninhabited islands. Many legends say that pirates hid their looted treasures in these places. It is not surprising that Oak Island, located off the west coast of Nova Scotia, has been attracting treasure hunters for two hundred years since, according to one of the legends, it is there that the “Money Pit” is located, promising untold riches to those who manage to reach it.

The first attempts to find treasures on Oak Island

The story of the “Money Pit” begins in 1795, when, one evening at dusk, a young man named Daniel McGinnis moored his fishing boat off a small island in Mahon Bay and witnessed strange lights flickering in its depths. Frightened by the unusual phenomenon, he hurried to leave the island immediately but returned the next day with friends.

After exploring the island, they found a large pit in its southeastern part, resembling a well, with freshly cut planks at the bottom. After removing the boards, the friends tried to dig in this place to find out what was under them. Just half a meter deep, they came across another layer of boards laid out directly in the clay. A layer of coconut husks was underneath, and there wasn’t a single coconut palm within a thousand miles.

The friends continued the excavation. They were determined to find the treasure because now they were sure that this was where it was located. But the deeper they dug, the more complex the hardened clay soil became.

At a depth of three meters, another layer of oak planks frozen in hard clay appeared, and the friends cheered a little. They ran out of strength and tore off these boards, but to their deep disappointment, nothing was under them either. After several weeks of hard searching, they gave up when the pit was about nine meters deep.

A giant stone slab with a coded message

Since then, rumors about the mysterious “Money Pit,” as it was popularly dubbed, have spread throughout the area and even beyond Scotland. In 1804, a new group of treasure seekers arrived on Oak Island, intending to unearth the mysterious treasure. They continued the excavation at the place where McGinnis and his friends were staying.

It was already a reasonably large quarry, washed out by numerous rains and filled with clay sludge over the past ten years. Visit. A F R I N I K. C O M. For the full article. Continuing the excavation, the researchers also came across layers of wooden planks laid out in the pit approximately every three meters.

A giant stone slab with mysterious symbols carved on it was discovered at a depth of 27 meters. The slab was transferred to one of the museums, and historians have been trying to decipher the text written on it for several years. One of the researchers claimed that the treasure’s location was encoded and should be searched for twelve meters deeper.

The sinking of the quarry did not put an end to the history of the search

It has only been a year since this company started working in the quarry, and only a few days after the stone slab was removed from its bottom, the quarry wall collapsed. Water from the bay gushed into the pit, flooding it to a depth of about twenty meters. Numerous attempts to pump out the water proved futile, and the company stopped its work.

However, even the fact that a deep body of water was formed at the quarry site did not stop the treasure hunters. On the contrary, their desire to find the treasure increased because now it seemed to everyone that no riches were left, and untold riches were hidden under the water column. It was not for nothing that someone created such a reliable fortification to protect it.

Since the end of the 19th century, various companies have arrived on the island one after another, starting searches and initiating a series of tragic events and bloody stories. Several workers fell to their deaths, falling off the edge of the quarry; some died when a pumping engine exploded, and others suffocated from gas that suddenly escaped from the bottom of the reservoir. Finally, there was a complete collapse of the bottom of the quarry, which fell into a natural cave hidden in the island’s bowels.

Rumors began to circulate about the curse of Oak Island, which carefully protects its secret from everyone. However, this only increased interest, and new treasure hunters searched for them.

President Roosevelt was obsessed with uncovering the mystery of the Money Pit

In 1909, another group of intrepid treasure hunters arrived on Oak Island, including 27-year-old Franklin Roosevelt. He was one of the first investors in the excavations conducted by the American researcher Henry Bowdoin, who promised that with enough heavy equipment, “a treasure worth about ten million dollars,” unimaginable wealth at the time, could become their property.

Roosevelt was always fond of treasure stories. As a teenager, he attempted to go on a treasure hunt with his school friend for the Scottish pirate Captain William Kidd. There were rumors that Kidd had buried his wealth somewhere on Oak Island.

When Bowdoin organized his expedition, Roosevelt joined him without hesitation. He helped drill a hole, blow it up with dynamite, and equip divers to the bottom of the resulting reservoir. Soon, the depth of the quarry reached 45 meters, but Bowdoin’s team was also unlucky in finding treasures, and Roosevelt dreamed of searching for treasure again for the rest of his life.

He continued to follow the events taking place on Oak Island. After a quarter of a century, he wanted to rejoin the research, hoping that modern means would be more advanced and adapted for the search than those used during Bowdoin’s time. However, World War II prevented him.

It is known that the mystery of the treasure tormented not only Roosevelt but also other famous people such as actor Errol Flynn, polar explorers Admiral Richard Byrd and Vincent Astor, and many others. However, each subsequent expedition faced unsolvable problems because, for two hundred years, the “Money Pit” had experienced many landslides, and the volumes of water pumped out of it lowered the bottom of the dug mine more profoundly. Getting to them yearly would become more challenging if treasures were stored there.

Dan Blankenship is the closest to solving the mystery of the “Money Pit.”

In 1965, the part of the island on which the “Money Pit” is located was bought by a certain Scotsman, Dan Blankenship. He had long been interested in the legends of Oak Island and knew more about its secrets than anyone else. Until he died in 2019, he tried to find treasures.

Dan moved to the island with his wife and son and carefully explored the quarry for fifty years, mapping all its landslides, underground tunnels, and caves. He claimed that the “Money Pit” flooding system was created artificially in case someone approached the treasures so that no one could find them. Find it. In addition, Dan was sure that the treasures were located somewhere else on the island, and the “Money Pit” was just bait, but the clues to where exactly they were hidden were on the island.

Over the years, Blankenship and his assistants have drilled countless wells and made several tiny but intriguing discoveries. At the bottom of the quarry, they discovered rusty pieces of metal, a piece of chain, and a mysterious cavity at a depth of seventy meters—enough to support belief in the existence of treasures.

In 1971, they conducted a fantastic experiment by lowering a 70-meter steel pipe to the bottom of the quarry and inserting a camera into it, through which, according to Dan, they saw several chests. Still, the divers who went down could not explore the bottom due to the strong current in this place. Five years later, Dan made a second attempt to descend to the very bottom of the reservoir and almost died during his deadly experiment – his son managed to pull him out a few seconds before a new collapse blocked the mine.

Despite believing in the island’s curse, Dan never stopped his search and thought he had come incredibly close to solving the mystery of the “Money Pit.” Now, his son David continues to do this, and he may be able to do what his father dreamed of.