Pick Axe (Eye of the Swamp)

About This Artifact

The Iron Pickaxe was recovered by Gary Drayton and Jack Begley during a search of the area near the Eye of the Swamp on Oak Island in Season 7 Episode 13, "Bromancing the Stones" (February 11, 2020). The find was made while the team was probing the extent of the stone paved area, which had been traced toward the Eye approximately 150 feet from the paved area's midpoint.

Gary Drayton identified the pickaxe as having unusually short tines, a design suited for tunneling work rather than surface excavation. A round-point spade of similar antiquity was recovered alongside the pickaxe. Drayton's initial field assessment placed the artifact in the 1700s and noted that the design supported the hypothesis of large-scale underground digging in the swamp area centuries before the 1795 Money Pit discovery.

In Season 7 Episode 14, "Burnt Offering" (February 25, 2020), Marty Lagina, Alex Lagina, and Gary Drayton took the pickaxe along with an iron strap recovered nearby to blacksmithing expert Carmen Legge at the Ross Farm Museum in New Ross, Nova Scotia. Legge confirmed the pickaxe was hand-forged and dated it to the mid-18th century, identifying it as suitable for tunneling. The accompanying iron strap was dated to 1710 to 1790 and identified as a brace from a nine-inch diameter ship's timber that had been exposed to fierce fire.

In Season 7 Episode 23, "Timeline" (April 28, 2020), historian Charles Barkhouse arranged the season's most significant finds along a physical timeline in the War Room. Gary Drayton singled out the Eye-of-the-Swamp pickaxe as one of the season's key tunneling-tool discoveries, alongside two metal swages for sharpening tunneling tools and an iron hand-point chisel recovered from property once belonging to Daniel McGinnis.

The pickaxe has not been carbon dated or laboratory tested for metallurgical composition beyond Carmen Legge's visual identification. The mid-18th century dating rests on the typology and forging characteristics observed by Legge, supported by Drayton's parallel identification of the round-point spade as period-consistent.