The story of Oak Island is not just about buried treasure. It is the story of the men who spent their fortunes, their sanity, and in some cases their lives trying to find it. For 230 years, the Money Pit has drawn dreamers and schemers, engineers and eccentrics, paupers and presidents. None have succeeded. None have given up.
The Early Searchers (1795-1850)
After Daniel McGinnis and his friends abandoned their excavation at thirty feet in 1795, the Money Pit sat dormant for eight years. But the boys never stopped talking about what they had found, and word eventually reached Simeon Lynds, a businessman from Truro.
In 1803, Lynds formed the Onslow Company and launched the first professional excavation. His crew of 25 to 30 men dug to 93 feet, discovering the now famous oak platforms, layers of coconut fiber, and the inscribed stone. They were certain treasure lay just below. Then the pit flooded, and despite months of effort, they could not pump it dry. The Onslow Company disbanded, its investors ruined.
Nearly half a century passed before the Truro Company arrived in 1849. Dr. David Lynds, a relative of Simeon, led the effort with businessman Jotham McCully. Unable to excavate through the flooded shaft, they pioneered a new approach: drilling. Using a pod auger, they bored through the mud and debris at the bottom of the pit.
At 98 feet, the drill passed through spruce, then oak, then struck something that felt like loose metal. It passed through 22 inches of this material before hitting more oak, then more metal, then spruce again. When the drill was pulled up, it brought three links of gold chain, the only treasure ever recovered from the Money Pit.
The Truro Company also made a crucial discovery: the flood tunnel. After digging exploratory shafts, they found that water was not seeping into the Money Pit from underground springs. It was being fed deliberately through a 500 foot tunnel from Smith's Cove. Someone had engineered a trap.
Possible box drain entrance→
The Oak Island Association (1861-1866)
The Oak Island Association arrived with 63 shareholders and renewed determination. They re-excavated the Money Pit to 88 feet and dug multiple new shafts trying to intercept the flood tunnel. On one attempt, they accidentally struck the original treasure chamber.
Workers heard a tremendous crash. The platforms and whatever rested on them, estimated at 10,000 board feet of lumber, dropped from around 100 feet to somewhere below 119 feet. The treasure, if there was treasure, had fallen deeper into the earth.
The Association also suffered the first death. In 1861, a worker was scalded when a pump engine's boiler exploded. The legend states that seven must die before the treasure is found. The count had begun.
The Oak Island Treasure Company (1893-1900)
Frederick Blair was 25 years old when he joined the Oak Island Treasure Company as its treasurer. He would remain involved with the island for the next 58 years, until his death in 1951.
Blair's company drilled extensively, and at 153 feet they made a remarkable discovery: a tiny scrap of parchment with letters written in India ink. The presence of a document suggested that whatever lay below was not merely pirate gold. Someone had buried something worth writing about.
The company also confirmed a second flood tunnel, this one originating from the south shore of the island. The engineers who designed the Money Pit had built redundant protection. If searchers blocked one tunnel, the other would continue flooding the shaft.
Blair's company ran out of money in 1900, but Blair himself never gave up. He spent the next five decades securing treasure rights, advising new expeditions, and documenting every discovery. He died believing the treasure was real and recoverable.
The Roosevelt Expedition (1909)
In 1909, a young Franklin Delano Roosevelt purchased shares in the Old Gold Salvage group and visited Oak Island. He was 27 years old, a recent law school graduate with a taste for adventure. The future president spent several weeks on the island, fascinated by the engineering puzzle.
Roosevelt maintained interest in Oak Island for the rest of his life. Letters from his presidential archives show he continued corresponding about the treasure hunt even while leading the nation through the Great Depression and World War II. He never returned to the island, but he never forgot it either.
The Roosevelt Connection→
Hyde Park Roosevelt Estate→
The Hedden and Hamilton Years (1936-1950)
Gilbert Hedden, a New Jersey steel manufacturer, purchased the eastern end of Oak Island in 1936. He brought modern equipment and systematic methods. His workers discovered the stone triangle: a perfect equilateral triangle made of beach stones, ten feet on each side, with a medial line pointing true north directly at the Money Pit.
They also found two drilled rocks, exactly 415 feet apart on an east-west line. These markers, along with the triangle, suggested the original depositors had left a survey system for relocating the treasure. Unfortunately, the stone triangle was later destroyed during careless excavation.
Erwin Hamilton took over from Hedden in 1938 and spent four years exploring. His most significant contribution was a dye test that revealed water from the flood tunnels exiting 100 yards offshore to the southeast. The system was even more extensive than anyone had imagined.
The Restall Tragedy (1959-1965)
Bob Restall was a former carnival stunt rider who moved his entire family to Oak Island in 1959. They lived in two small shacks with no electricity or running water, working the Money Pit by hand while tourists watched from the shore.
For six years, the Restalls dug and pumped, slowly making progress. They found a stone at Smith's Cove inscribed with the date 1704, evidence that activity on the island predated the official discovery by nearly a century.
On August 17, 1965, Bob Restall climbed down into a shaft to check a pump. Without warning, he collapsed. His son Bobbie, just 18 years old, climbed down to rescue him and also collapsed. Karl Graeser, a worker, followed them down. Then Cyril Hiltz, just 16 years old. All four died from hydrogen sulfide gas that had accumulated in the shaft.
The tragedy remains the darkest chapter in Oak Island's history. Four men dead in minutes, including a father and son. The curse now claimed six victims.
Robert Dunfield and the Big Dig (1965-1966)
Robert Dunfield was a petroleum geologist from California who believed the Money Pit could be solved with brute force. He built a causeway connecting Oak Island to the mainland, the first time the island had been accessible by land. Then he brought in a 70 ton crane and simply dug.
Dunfield excavated a pit 140 feet deep and 100 feet across, destroying much of the original Money Pit area in the process. He found nothing but disturbed earth and seawater. When his money ran out, he left behind a cratered moonscape where the Money Pit had once been.
His causeway, however, remains. Oak Island is no longer an island.
Dan Blankenship and Triton Alliance (1966-2005)
Dan Blankenship read an article about Oak Island in Reader's Digest in 1965 and was immediately hooked. He showed it to his wife and announced: "There's treasure on Oak Island, and I'm going to be instrumental in getting it."
He moved his family from Florida to Nova Scotia and spent the next 50 years searching. In 1967, he partnered with David Tobias, a Montreal businessman, to form Triton Alliance. Together they conducted the most extensive exploration to date.
Their most dramatic discovery came in 1971. A camera lowered into Borehole 10-X, a shaft 180 feet northeast of the Money Pit, captured images at 230 feet that appeared to show a severed human hand, wooden chests, and tools. Blankenship made several dives into the flooded chamber but could never relocate the objects.
Blankenship nearly died in 1976 when the casing of 10-X collapsed while he was 90 feet underground. He escaped but never fully recovered his health. Still, he refused to leave. He lived on Oak Island until his death in 2019 at age 95, the longest serving searcher in the island's history.
The Lagina Brothers (2006-Present)
Rick Lagina first read about Oak Island in that same Reader's Digest article when he was 11 years old. He dreamed of searching for the treasure for nearly 40 years before he and his brother Marty purchased a stake in Oak Island Tours in 2006.
The Laginas brought something no previous searchers had: a television audience. The Curse of Oak Island premiered on the History Channel in 2014 and became a phenomenon. Millions of viewers watched as the brothers deployed ground penetrating radar, seismic imaging, and massive excavation equipment.
But beyond the entertainment, the Laginas have made a serious contribution to history. Their discoveries have fundamentally shifted the conversation about early contact between Europe and North America. A medieval cross dating to 900-1300 AD. Human bones of both European and Middle Eastern origin, centuries old. Leather bookbinding material. Evidence of sophisticated construction predating Columbus by hundreds of years.
To investigate these findings, the Laginas have assembled a network of European experts, historians, and researchers, bringing academic rigor to a mystery long dismissed by mainstream archaeology. The work of Doug Crowell, Judi Rudebusch, Emiliano Sacchetti and Corjan Mol suggests that Oak Island may hold answers not just about buried treasure, but about who really reached the New World first, and why.
They have not found the treasure. But they may have found something more significant: proof that our understanding of history is incomplete.
The Cost of the Hunt
Estimates suggest that searchers have spent between $50 million and $100 million on Oak Island over 230 years. Six people have died. Marriages have ended. Fortunes have been lost. Careers have been abandoned.
And still they come. The Money Pit has never lacked for searchers, and likely never will. Whatever lies buried there, the hunt itself has become a kind of treasure, passed from one generation of dreamers to the next.
The search continues.
