Oak Island

The oldest printed account of Oak Island found and read for this page is a letter signed "Patrick", dated Truro, 16 September 1861. The Nova Scotian, a Halifax newspaper, printed it on 30 September. It tells of a pit on the island that kept filling with water. A short notice in the Liverpool Transcript of August 1857 is known but was not read.

Five years later the story crossed the continent. A correspondent writing from Chester, on Mahone Bay, sent a long account to the New York Herald, printed on 2 September 1866. The Louisville Daily Democrat in Kentucky reprinted it on 13 September, the Daily Phoenix of Columbia, South Carolina, on 21 September, and the Daily British Colonist of Victoria, British Columbia, on 5 November. The Victoria copy credits the New York Times; the others credit the Herald.

The settlers told a story to go with the pit. A dying sailor, it went, said he had sailed with Captain Kidd and helped bury about two million pounds on an island. In 1883 a county map put the name on the ground: A. F. Church's map of Lunenburg County prints the words "Kidd's Treasures" on the island's east side.

The 'Patrick' letter (1861), the Louisville Daily Democrat, the Daily Phoenix and the Daily British Colonist (1866), J. B. McCully (1862) for the settlers' story, Church's map (1883). Facts f001 to f004, f019, f051 on the data page.

The story says that in 1795 three young men, Smith, McGinnis and Vaughn, found a sunken spot under a great oak on the island's east end, with a tackle block hanging from a branch above it. No paper of the time records it, and the year itself first appears in print in a company prospectus of 1893.

The accounts of the 1860s and later tell what the diggers found as they went down: flagstones near the top, timber about every 10 ft (3 m), charcoal and putty, and a flat stone cut with letters or figures. At about 90 ft (27 m) the water came in. That evening a crowbar struck something hard a few feet deeper, and by morning 60 ft (18 m) of water stood in the shaft.

Where the pit was is now a matter of survey. The modern work at the pit area, Golder's borings of 1970 and Woods Hole's satellite survey of 28 July 1995, puts it on the south slope of the eastern hill, about 80 m (260 ft) from the south shore, to about 8 m (26 ft) either way. That is the area the searchers took for the Money Pit, not the shaft of 1795: Golder wrote in 1971 that the pit's exact location had been lost.

The 1862 and 1863 accounts, DesBrisay (1895), the 1893 prospectus; Golder Associates (1971); Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1996). Facts f018, f020, f021, f022 to f029, f053.

Smith's Cove is the east-facing beach, about 140 m (460 ft) east-north-east of the Money Pit. About 1850 the Truro Company's men found stone-built drains under the sand there, and a brown fibre like the husk of a coconut. A witness's letter of 1862 speaks of drains at the shore; the count of five drains and the name Smith's Cove first appear together in the prospectus of 1893.

In 1995 the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution dated a coconut-type fibre dug from just below low tide in the cove. Its result, 1140 radiocarbon years before present, give or take 30, is about 1,100 years. The report says how the fibre came to be there is unclear.

In January 2018 an episode of The Curse of Oak Island showed a small lead cross with a square hole, found with a metal detector on the cove's beach. That summer the University of New Brunswick's Laser Ablation Lab analysed it and said the lead was of European origin. The lab did not give the cross an age.

McCully (1862), the 1893 prospectus, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1996), the series' episode list, the University of New Brunswick (2018). The province's gazetteer puts a "Smiths Cove" name point on the south shore; this page follows the diggers' and the surveys' east beach. Facts f038 to f043.

The Cave-in Pit. In 1878 a hole opened under an ox team between the Money Pit and Smith's Cove. It lies on a line between the pit and the drains.

The stone triangle. In 1897 Captain Welling reported a triangle of beach stones near the south shore, pointing true north, with a line from its apex that runs toward the Money Pit.

Nolan's Cross. Six large boulders in the shape of a cross, on the land of Fred Nolan, a surveyor who first came to the island in 1958. No source read for this page gives the year he found it. In 1969 Nolan drained the swamp in the middle of the island and reported part of what looked like a ship's mast.

Borehole 10-X. Triton Alliance drilled it in 1969, about 160 ft (49 m) from the Money Pit, through the bedrock to 235 ft (72 m). In 1971 Daniel Blankenship and David Tobias said a camera lowered down it recorded possible chests, human remains and tools. The images were unclear, and none of it has been confirmed independently. In 2016 a dive to the bottom found no artifacts.

Fortune (2016), the Wroclawski chronology, Wikipedia. The triangle and the cross are placed from a tourism map, to about 40 m (130 ft), and drawn with a dashed ring; the swamp is the province's topographic map. Facts f035, f036, f044 to f047, p02, p05.

In April 2006 two brothers from Michigan, Rick and Marty Lagina, bought half of Oak Island Tours. Since January 2014 their work has been filmed for The Curse of Oak Island, and its seasons account for most of the digs on the map after that year. The series' fourteenth season is scheduled to begin on 10 November 2026, by one source.

Our table records 153 digs, shafts, drill holes, cofferdams and tests from 1795 to the seasons of 2025 and 2026, and 142 of them can be placed. Treat 153 as a floor: it counts what the sources record, not what is in the ground. The series gives no coordinates, so its digs are drawn at the site each episode names, as hollow dots.

In 2016 Natural Resources Canada's laser survey of Lunenburg County covered the island. Its bare-earth model, the ground of the map above, shows the island without its trees: about 55 ha (136 acres) and 1.34 km (0.83 miles) long, with the scars of two centuries of digging on the east end.

Wikipedia; CBC News (2014); our table of digs and holes; Natural Resources Canada, HRDEM (2016). Facts f014, f016, f017, f048 to f050, f052.