The Oak Island Mystery Has Been Solved 1 Hour Ago!

My brother and I are going to be miners and a heritage is mining my music. God, imagine a mystery that’s been around for centuries, filled with tales of buried treasure, secret manuscripts, and legendary artifacts. The sheep music, my! This is the story of Oak Island, a small piece of land in Nova Scotia that has captured the imagination of treasure hunters since the 1700s. People have long believed that Oak Island holds incredible treasures, everything from pirate loot and Shakespeare’s lost works to the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant, possibly hidden by the Knights Templar.

But now, after centuries of speculation and countless expeditions, the mystery of Oak Island has finally been solved. Early excavation… very little confirmed information is available about early treasure hunting on Oak Island, so most stories are based on word of mouth from the late 18th century. It was only many years later that publishers began investigating these stories.

The first printed story about treasure found by a settler named Daniel McInnes appeared in 1857. Five years later, one of their original diggers gave a statement about the original story and the activities of the Enslow and Truro companies. The earliest story by settlers, first recorded in 1866, involves a dying sailor from Captain Kidd’s crew. He claimed that a treasure worth $2 million was buried on the island.

The most popular discovery story says that around 1799, Daniel McGinness found a depression in the ground while searching for a farm location. Believing this depression matched the Captain Kidd story, he got help from John Smith and Anthony Vaughn. They dug and found flagstones 2 feet down. Later accounts mention oak platforms every 10 feet, but the earliest stories only talk about marks at these intervals. The stories also mentioned tool marks on the pit walls, and the soil was loose, unlike the surrounding ground.

The three men reportedly stopped digging at 30 feet due to superstitious dread. Another version of the story says all four people involved were teenagers, and McGinness first found the depression in 1795 during a fishing trip. This version ends with them giving up after digging as much as they could.

Around 1802, a group called the Onsler Company reportedly sailed from central Nova Scotia to Oak Island to find hidden treasure. They dug down to about 90 feet, finding layers of logs or marks every 10 feet, as well as layers of charcoal, putty, and coconut fiber, and a large stone inscribed with symbols. The pit then flooded with 60 feet of water for unknown reasons, and the excavation was abandoned after workers tried to recover the treasure by digging a tunnel from a second shaft that also flooded.

The last major company of this early period was the Truro Company, formed in 1849 by investors. They redid the pit to 86 feet, but it flooded again. They then drilled five boreholes into the original shaft. The drill went through a spruce platform at 98 feet, then hit layers of oak, some metal pieces, another spruce layer, and clay for 7 feet. The platform was hit twice, each time bringing up metal, wood, and coconut fiber. Another shaft was dug 109 feet deep northwest of the original shaft with a tunnel branching off to intersect the treasure. However, seawater flooded this new shaft, and workers thought the water was connected to the sea because the flooded pit rose and fell with the tides.

The Truro Company then focused on excavating a nearby cove, where they found a flood tunnel system. When they failed to stop the flooding, they dug one final shaft 118 feet deep with a tunnel under the original shaft. During this excavation, the bottom of the original shaft collapsed. It was later speculated that the treasure had fallen through the new shaft into a deep void, causing the new shaft to flood. The Truro Company ran out of funds and dissolved around 1851.

The first published account was in 1857, when the Liverpool Transcript mentioned a group digging for Captain Kidd’s treasure on Oak Island. This was followed by a more detailed account by a justice of the peace in Chester, Nova Scotia, in 1861, also published in the Transcript under the title “The Oak Island Folly,” expressing skepticism about the treasure.

The first full account of events on the island appeared on October 16th, 1862, when Anthony Vaughn’s memories were recorded by the Transcript. This account included the activities of the Enslow and Truro Companies, the mysterious stone, and the Truro Company’s finding wooden platforms and metal pieces. These accounts, based on Liverpool Transcript articles, also appeared in the Nova Scotian and the British Colonist and are mentioned in an 1895 book called “A History of Lunenburg County.”

The Oak Island Association: In 1861, a group called the Oak Island Association tried to dig up the original pit on the island. They dug it down to 88 feet and also dug two new shafts. One shaft missed its target, a supposed flood tunnel, while the other connected with the original shaft at about 105 feet deep. However, both shafts filled with water when they hit the flood tunnel again. One of the wooden platforms at 98 feet collapsed and fell to a lower level, causing other platforms to fall. Any treasure, along with about 10,000 board feet of wood, ended up around 119 feet deep.

In the fall of 1861, the first accidental death happened when a pump engine exploded, killing a worker. This was first mentioned in a book from 1863, and then more details about their death came out five years later.

In the spring of 1862, the group dug another shaft 107 feet deep parallel to the original one. They tried to pump water out of the original shaft, reaching 103 feet deep, but the pumps couldn’t handle the floodwater. They did find some old tools left by earlier diggers. In 1864, before they made one last effort to reach the money pit, they hit the flood tunnels again. By then, the original shaft was weakened by saltwater, and workers refused to enter it. Mining engineers inspected the shaft and declared it unsafe. The group ran out of money and stopped their efforts in 1866.

Another group, called the Oak Island El Dorado Company, or the Halifax Company, formed in 1866 to search for the treasure. By then, the island was full of shafts, holes, and tunnels from previous treasure hunters. When they couldn’t stop the flood tunnels at Smith’s Cove, they focused on the main shaft. They drilled exploratory holes and found bits of wood, soft clay, and blue mud, but nothing valuable. The group gave up in 1867.

In 1896, an unknown group came to the island with steam pumps and boring equipment. Although the pumps couldn’t keep water out of the side shaft, they took some boring samples. One sample had a tiny piece of sheepkin parchment with two letters, V or Y, written in ink.

In 1897, a worker named Maynard Kaiser died in an accident when he fell to his death. In 1898, the group poured red paint into the flooded pit, reportedly showing three exit holes around the island, at Smith’s Cove.

In August 1909, Captain Henry El Bowden arrived on Oak Island as part of the Old Gold Salvage Group, which included Franklin D. Roosevelt. They focused on the money pit. Divers were sent down, but nothing interesting was found. Bowden also looked at Smith’s Cove, where people had reported seeing drain tunnels and a ringbolt in a rock. They discovered the remains of an old dam from 1850, but nothing else. Bowden also checked a stone cipher in Halifax, but it was just a hard basalt rock with no symbols. The team left the island in November 1911.

In 1928, a New York newspaper ran a story about Oak Island, sparking interest. William Chappelle dug a new shaft in 1931, hoping to find the original pit. At 7 feet deep, they found an axe, an anchor, and a pickaxe, but the area was cluttered with debris from past digs, making it hard to identify their origins.

Gilbert, a steel company owner, read the 1928 article and became intrigued by the engineering challenges. He made six trips to the island, collected books and articles, and even consulted an author in England. After buying part of the island in 1935, he began his own digs but found nothing significant.

In 1959, Robert Reese, his son, and partner Carly Gr started working on Oak Island. In 1965, they attempted to seal a storm drain in Smith’s Cove and dug a 27-ton shaft. Tragically, on August 17th, Ralph was overcome by toxic gas. His son Grazer and two others also died trying to save him.

That same year, Robert Dunfield leased part of the island. He used a large crane to dig a 134-foot deep and 100-ton wide pit, building a causeway to transport the equipment. His lease ended in August 1966.

In January 1967, Daniel C. Blankenship, David Tobias, Robert Dunfield, and Fred Nolan formed a syndicate to explore Oak Island. In 1969, Blankenship and Tobias created the Triton Alliance and bought most of the island. They dug a new 235-foot shaft, called Borehole 10X, where they claimed to see chests, human remains, and tools through a camera. However, the images were unclear and unverified. The shaft later collapsed, and work stopped due to a lack of funds and partnership issues.

In 1979, the island was featured in an episode of the television show In Search Of. In 1983, Triton Alliance sued Frederick Nolan over land ownership. Nolan’s ownership was confirmed in 1985, but he had to pay damages for affecting Triton’s tourism. Triton lost the appeal in 1989, though Nolan’s damages were reduced.

During the 1990s, exploration slowed due to legal disputes and financial problems. In 2005, part of the island was up for sale for $7 million. The Oak Island Tourism Society hoped the Canadian government would buy it, but a group of American drillers did instead.

In June 1996, Robert S. Young bought a 4-acre piece of the island from Fred Nolan. This land remained untouched. Young documented his finds, including a 1781 Spanish silver coin, on his website. He passed away on October 28th, 2020, and the land went to his estate.

In April 2006, it was announced that brothers Rick and Marty Lagina from Michigan bought 50% of Oak Island Tours from David Tobias for an undisclosed amount of money. The other half of the company is owned by Dan Blankenship. A year before this purchase, Center Road Developments, along with Alan Costu and Brian Boach, who are part of the Michigan group, bought Lot 25 on Oak Island from David Tobias for around $230,000.

After buying the shares, the Michigan group, together with Blankenship, decided to start working again on Oak Island, hoping to find buried treasure and solve the island’s mystery.

In July 2010, Blankenship and the other owners of Oak Island Tours announced on their website that they had received a treasure hunting license from the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Tourism, Culture, and Heritage. This license allowed them to search for treasure until December 31st, 2010. After that date, these departments replaced the treasure hunting license with the Oak Island Treasure Act. This new act, effective from January 1st, 2011, allows treasure hunting to continue on the island as long as the hunters have a license from the Minister of Natural Resources.

The Lagina brothers’ exploration efforts have been featured on the reality television show The Curse of Oak Island, which has been airing on the History Channel since 2014.