The Money Pit Map

Every shaft, tunnel and borehole on record: where it went down, how deep it went and what it hit.

367Holes on Record

231On the Map

590Feet, Deepest
Borehole 401

27Campaigns

21Tunnels & Workings

Open the Map

The Map

Where Every Hole Went Down

Colour shows who drilled, a square marks a caisson, a gold ring a hole with artifacts. Zoomed out, the map shows the landmarks; zoom in for the full grid. Pick an era on the timeline to see one chapter of the search, open Layers for tunnels and workings, and tap anything for its record. Around the Money Pit the drill logs record more than soil and rock: 99 hit wood, 48 broke into a cavity, 67 brought up metal, 46 hit a possible tunnel, and 86 artifacts in the vault are traced to 43 holes.

The Money Pit Map

231 holes on the map

Era

1795 to today. Pick an era to see only what was dug then.

Holes

What the drills found

Counts are holes on the map. The rest of the map fades while a chip is on.

Reveal by zoom: landmarks first, the full grid up close Solid = recorded, dashed = approximate, dotted = conjectural. Positions are approximate.

1795190019602006today

Positions: MacPhie (2008), Hamilton (1939), Dunfield (1965), the S13E07 grid plan and the episodes, approximate. Imagery: Esri, Vantor, June 2025, about 5 m.

Four Eras of Digging

Who Dug, and When

Every hole on record, in four chapters. Open one to see its campaigns and holes, the most revealing first; tap a hole to open its record on the map.

I Pick and Shovel1795 to 1899 Hand-dug shafts chasing the flooded pit, from the first dig in 1795 to the Treasure Company's drill holes of 1897. 28 holes deepest 188 ft 6 on the map 23 artifacts

Truro auger holes (1849) · 5 holes Halifax Company drilling (1866-67) · 3 holes Smith's Cove detonation holes (1897) · 5 holes Treasure Company Money Pit holes (1897) · 5 holes

II The Companies1900 to 1959 Drilling rigs and bigger shafts: Bowdoin's cores, the Chappell and Hedden shafts, Hamilton's tunnels and the Greene and Harman holes. 51 holes deepest 190 ft 2 on the map 6 artifacts

Treasure Company auger holes (1900) · 8 holes Old Gold Salvage drilling (Bowdoin, 1909) · 28 holes Chappell Shaft drilling (1931) Talbot drilling (1933) Canadian Oak Island Treasure Co. drilling (1934) · 14 holes Hedden lateral probing (1936) Hedden Shaft borings (1937) · 17 holes Hamilton lateral holes (1938) · 58 holes Hamilton bedrock drilling (1941) Greene drilling (1955) · 4 holes Harman brothers drilling (1958) Baker drill-holes (before 1934)

III The Machine Age1960 to 2005 Heavy machinery and engineers: Dunfield's excavation, the Becker drilling, the Warnock Hersey and Golder studies, and Borehole 10-X. 92 holes deepest 590 ft 65 on the map 20 artifacts

Johnson drill-holes (1962) Dunfield drilling (1966) Becker drilling (1967) · 49 holes Warnock Hersey drilling (1969) · 9 holes 10-X pumping holes (1970-93) Golder Associates drilling (1970) · 8 holes Triton drilling (1973) · 5 holes Money Pit large-diameter holes (1975-76) · 4 holes Holes west of the Cave-In Pit (1976-77) · 3 holes Oak Island Detection Program holes (1993) · 5 holes Noon Star drilling (1999, 2001) · 40 holes

IV The Show2006 on The present search, filmed for The Curse of Oak Island: the Garden Shaft, H-8 and the grid of boreholes and caissons around the Money Pit. 196 holes deepest 233 ft 158 on the map 35 artifacts

How we know this: sources and method

Positions

Positions of the older holes come from Les MacPhie's 2008 technical report, read from his Figures 3, 6 and 7 and checked against distances in the other reports. Holes drilled for the show are placed from their names and the distances given in the episodes. All positions are approximate. Each dot marks the top of the hole; many were drilled at an angle.

Tunnels and Workings

The 21 lines and areas on the map are drawn by how well the record fixes them. Recorded shapes were surveyed or measured by the people who dug or found them (the shaft outlines and solution channel from the S13E07 grid plan). Approximate shapes are placed from distances and directions in a report or sketch: Dunfield's excavation from MacPhie's 2008 figures, Hamilton's tunnels from his 1939 report, the drains from Dunfield's 1965 field sketch. Conjectural lines join the points the record gives without knowing the course between them: the alleged flood tunnel, and tunnels known only from the holes that cut them. Each record names its sources.

Depths

Post-1966 ground: measured after Robert Dunfield lowered the Money Pit area by about 10 ft (MacPhie 2008, Golder, Warnock Hersey).
Original ground: measured from the surface before 1966 (Harris and MacPhie give the Becker depths this way).
Anything else is as the source reports it. A hole's depth is the deepest point any source records for it.

Reports Used

Les MacPhie, The Money Pit: Geotechnical and Archaeological Conditions and the 1967 Becker Drilling Results (2008)
Golder Associates, Subsurface Investigation, The Oak Island Exploration, draft report (1971)
Warnock Hersey International, Soils Investigation, Oak Island (1969), with J.C. Osler's review (1970)
Dan Blankenship, periodic reports 1965 to 1994, compiled by Les MacPhie (2016)
Graham Harris and Les MacPhie, Oak Island and its Lost Treasure, 3rd ed. (2013)
Erwin Hamilton, Work Carried On at Oak Island (Summer 1939), typescript, and his sketch of the Money Pit shafts
Robert Dunfield, Field Sketch of Drain System, Smith's Cove, 25 July 1965
The Curse of Oak Island, History Channel, for holes drilled from 2006 on

Imagery

Esri World Imagery (Vantor, June 2025, 0.34 m per pixel, stated accuracy about 5 m). The photo is sharp to zoom 18; beyond that it fades so the holes stay readable. Dots may sit a few metres off today's features in the photo.

Dig Deeper

The Money Pit Map

Where Every Hole Went Down