Across the water in Nova Scotia, the provincial government has issued treasure-hunting permits to the current owners of the Oak Island Money Pit, site of perhaps the most famous and enduring buried treasure legend. Members of Michigan-based Oak Island Tours have said they will be moving forward with digs in the “very near future.”
For at least 150 years, treasure seekers have been digging up the eastern end of Oak Island-located 40 miles southwest of Halifax-in search of something of enormous value. Some say it’s Captain William Kidd’s treasure, others that it contains Marie Antoinette’s jewels, the documents that prove the true identity of William Shakespeare, and even the Holy Grail (placed there by the Knights Templar.)
The quest has cost six lives and tens of millions of dollars. The hunters’ most intriguing “discoveries”-a large stone bearing cryptic symbols, a series of oak platforms, and a bit of gold chain-themselves disappeared more than a century ago, leaving little evidence that they ever existed. Diggers long ago obliterated the original “money pit,” replacing it with an ever-growing network of shafts, tunnels, bore holes, and rubble piles. But the digging never seems to stop.
The treasure hunters, I fear, are the victims of a very old, very famous confidence scheme, one that afflicted Maine and much of New England for more than a century.
In the late 18th century, large numbers of people in New England and New York became convinced that there was treasure hidden underground, just waiting for an enterprising soul to dig it up. In 1762, a Manhattan farmer took out a newspaper ad, begging money diggers to stop digging up his fields in the night, as their holes were harming his cattle and farmhands. “If any among them come to me I will give them liberty to dig in the day time if they will fill up the holes of their night’s work,” he promised.
Such pleas often fell on deaf ears, for treasure mania was spreading across the northeast. Hunters seeking a “Spanish mine” dug dozens of tunnels into a Bristol, Vermont cliff. Residents of Boylston, Mass. spent moonlit nights digging a forty-foot wide pit while a sentry watched with witch hazel rods in his hands. A 19th century visitor to Somesville discovered “a couple of strange looking men hard at work” digging for Kidd’s treasure in a forest clearing. In Casco Bay, treasure hunters attacked most every island in search of Kidd’s booty, favoring Jewell and Pond. In the 1930s, treasure hunters in the Boothbay region tried to drain the pond on Outer Heron and left Reed Island potholed with pits. Everywhere the hunters seemed to share peculiar beliefs about how one succeeded at digging: that they had to work only at certain hours of the night or phases of the moon, that certain tools had to be employed, that the digging had to take place in absolute silence or, perhaps, with the right spells uttered at the critical moments. Dreams would reveal where the digging grounds were located and magic circles had to be laid out around a site. Failure to adhere to the various rules would, it was said, result in the treasure being whisked away by spirits.
Experts soon appeared, offering assistance against these supernatural forces in exchange for a fee. Many came to be known as “rodsmen” as they claimed to be able to locate hidden wealth with “seer stones” or a witch hazel divining rod. In a typical incident in Middletown, Vt., a rodsman moved into town and, over the course of a year duped many of his neighbors into investing in his hunts, each of which would be unsuccessful because “some slight incident occurred to break the mysterious spell” he had cast.
Joseph Smith, Jr. and his father were among the most infamous Vermont rodsmen, and Smith himself was brought to trial; he would later claim to have found a series of gold plates on which were encoded the Book of Mormon. In 1804 a conman convinced Norridgewock residents to loan him a herd of livestock against his purported treasure horde; he sold the livestock for cash and fled to Canada.
As critics have pointed out, the Oak Island story fits the pattern. According to legend, the pit was discovered by three boys in 1795 and excavated to 90 feet by a group of investors in 1803, who discovered the inscribed stone. This latter group supposedly reached an oak platform just before stopping for the day; on their return, the pit was flooded. In 1849 one of the investors allegedly returned and dug up a gold chain before triggering more booby traps that deprived them of the treasure. Sound familiar?
Only on careful examination, there’s no evidence that any of these things actually happened. The earliest written accounts of any of these events date to 1861, at a time when another Oak Island digging outfit was selling shares at “an enormous premium.” The most likely scenario-pointed out years ago by researcher Richard Joltes-is that the owners of this mid-19th century treasure-digging company cooked up the story to attract and defraud investors. So good luck Oak Island Tours. You may want to find yourselves a good rodsman.
Colin Woodard is an award-winning journalist and author of The Lobster Coast and The Republic of Pirates. www.colinwoodard.com