Square Swamp Vault

About This Structure

A rectangular structure composed of handmade bricks and cut slate, located in the northern section of the triangle-shaped swamp near the cobblestone pathway that leads toward the Eye of the Swamp. The feature was first exposed in Season 12, Episode 9 when Alex Lagina found a brick and Billy Gerhardt spotted cut slate during excavation. Dr. Ian Spooner identified the bricks as handmade, and archaeologist Laird Niven said he had never seen a slate-and-brick structure like it on the island. Fellow landowner Tom Nolan, whose father Fred Nolan spent five decades investigating the swamp, said he had never encountered anything like it either. He noted that two wells found on the nearby Anthony Graves property were both round, making this square structure distinct from any known domestic feature in the area.

Excavation of the vault produced a large piece of iron pipe, a wrought iron hook that Tom suggested was used to lower or remove items from the structure, and a square iron crank handle. X-ray diffraction analysis by Emma Culligan showed that the vault bricks differed in composition from the 1600s-era bricks found on Lot 5 and at Smith's Cove, aligning instead with local samples from the 1800s. The iron pipe and crank, however, dated to the late 1700s, leading the team to conclude the vault was constructed before the discovery of the Money Pit in 1795. The feature sits along a 600-foot cobblestone pathway bordered by wooden survey stakes dated to the 1650s through 1700s, and within a broader swamp construction zone that Steve Guptill placed between 1630 and 1750. Online commentary has dismissed the structure as an outhouse connected to the Graves homestead, but the pre-Money Pit dating of the artifacts recovered from within it, the handmade brick construction, and its position along a surveyed pathway of 17th-century origin are inconsistent with that explanation.

Eight-sided survey stakes matching those found near the vault were also recovered in Season 13, reinforcing the connection between the feature and the wider swamp infrastructure.