The Curse of Oak Island: 600-YEAR-OLD Horseshoe Found on the Island (Season 10)

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Rick, Gary, and Billy returned to the
triangle-shaped swamp to unearth
additional sections of the believed
man-made Stone Ram.

“So I think what we’ll do is, let’s try to
follow this path.
If we can make a positive relationship
between the paved area to the ramp, the
ramp to the stone path,
then the next step would be to try to
somehow connect the stone path to
something, right?
Let’s start digging.”

Having moved several yards northeast
from their previous search location, Rick,
Billy, and Gary are digging in dryer
ground in the hopes of determining if
the ramp actually does connect the 800
year-old paved area to the nearby Stone
pathway. It’s up and also if it contains
any important clues or valuables.

“Philly, hold up!”
Straight out of the bucket.
“What we got here?
First sweep, first artifact, straight out.
It’s an awesome…
been in the ground a long time, that’s
what I think. Yeah, it wouldn’t have that
much corrosion on it. Yeah, it really
is a small horseshoe,
found on the Stone Ram in the
triangle-shaped swamp.

If so, was it simply discarded here, or
could it have been dropped during the
construction of the feature?”

“And what is it? Is it just misshapen or is
that site smaller than that? I’m broken.”

“I would imagine it’s misshapen.”
“I don’t know, hopefully Carmen Legg will
be able to shed some light on that and
tell us how old it is.”

“Why, in this one,
um, if you’re coming to the island and
back in the day by boat,
you would have had a small horse on a
boat, you know? Avalanche horses on boats.”

Could Gary be correct that this shoe
belonged to a horse that came to Oak
Island on a large sailing vessel? If so,
might it be related to the various
fragments of ships that the team has
found in the swamp over the past several
years,
or the pieces of cargo barrels that were
also found in this area, which
blacksmithing expert Carmen Lake
believes could date back as early as the
15th century?

“Maybe something special about this
horseshoe. Brilliant start.”
“A good start, that’s for sure.”

“Alright, we are really hot to truck. I
knew there was one coming.
After all these years, I still believe
the swamp has secrets.”

“Oh, that was it.”
“And the only way to uncover them,
unfortunately, is to dig.
And given the current discovery
conditions, i.e. them being wet, that takes
time.”

“I mean, all these logs and sticks,
hard to believe this was always wetland.”
“Yeah.”
“Say that down in the original swamp layer,
kind of looks like it. How far above the
water are you, left foot?”

“I’ll leave it up to you to decide the
width of it, but I think
probably that stone and those alder
bushes, I wouldn’t go any wider.”
“No, I think that’s the limit of the
ramp anyway. We’ll see, but
let’s keep digging.”
“Yep.”

The following morning,
“Thanks for coming out.”
“You’re welcome.”

Billy Gerhardt and Gary Drayton meet
with blacksmithing expert Carmen Legg in
the research center.
“Always like to see it, because that means
that we’ve found something really interesting.”
“Well, I hope I can tell you something about it.”
They are eager to get Carmen’s assessment of
the horseshoe that was recovered one day
ago on the Stone Ramp in the swamp.

“Look at that. Oh, certainly horseshoes.”
“Yeah.”
“Let me have a look at this.”
“It’s not very corroded, so
you’ll notice that the top of the shoe
is quite thick and then it comes down.”
“Yeah.”
“Usually when you see that, it indicates a
very old shoe.
Also, you’ll notice that the shoe is very
short.
It’s not a draft or a shoe, it’s more
like a riding horse or a cavalry horse.
This I can say safely is the oldest
horseshoe I’ve seen so far.”

“The plot thickens. Then, it’s not
consistent all the way around, so it’s an
old handmade shoe.
I would go back to the
1400s.”

“But it would bring a riding horse to an
island. Everything came to the island by
boat, and there would have had to have
been someone in charge of all these
constructs, and they would have been
riding a horse.
North slightly? Yes, probably.”
“Yeah, that’s certainly true. The shortness
of the shoe, it makes the horse stand up
prouder.
It was for a high-prestige horse, you
know, something that you want to give a
commanding presence when you rode this
horse.”

“You know, this is fine along the
edge of the stone path, and some of the
construction techniques are similar to
stuff that the guys found in Portugal.
Yeah, the stone path looks exactly like this.”

“One year ago, while visiting Alcáçova de
Sierra, Portugal, where the Knights
Templar were known to have maintained a
stronghold between the 12th and 16th
centuries,
it looks similar to what we have, that’s
for sure.”

“Yeah, Rick Lagina and members of the team
saw a Roman road that was nearly
identical to the one that was uncovered
in the swamp back in 2020.”

“There is no known recorded visits by
horses here in Nova Scotia before 1670.”

“Wow. Could Billy Gerhardt’s notion that
this horseshoe is potentially related to
the Stone Road be correct?
If so, might it not only help explain how
the Roman coin and token came to be on
Oak Island,
wait, don’t tell the story, and this is
very old,
but also be another key clue in
identifying just who was behind the 228
year-old mystery?”

“I am surprised that Carmen has indicated
that this horseshoe represents the
stylistically from the 1400s, and for
Carmen to say something that specific
about something he is very familiar with
is quite extraordinary.”

“If this is from that time period, then we have
rewritten history. Wow.”

“Like 1400s. Brilliant. That’s got to be
the oldest metal artifact ever to come
out in the swamp.”

“It’s the oldest
horseshoe I’ve seen in Nova Scotia,
and I’ve seen a lot of shoes.”

“Wow. Dang. I’m making history, Gary.”
“Yeah, really, yeah.”
“Thank you, Carmen. All this is amazing.”
“Very good, very good. Keep bringing stuff
to me.”
“We will do, mate. Cheers.”

[Music]
Foreign, foreign.
Foreign.