Treasure has always been one of those things that will immediately find an interested ear. And sunken treasure – particularly unclaimed sunken treasure – is no exception. And Oak Island in Nova Scotia is said to have just that kind of treasure. The only problem is, no one knows who constructed the elaborate trap guarding it and after almost a century of trying, no one has managed to best this incredible feat of engineering.
To look at the entrance to the famous “Money Pit” of Oak Island is nothing special. The chamber appears to be a small hole in the ground that has been dug up and flooded several times. It may even look like a sort of well that people have tried to blast around over the course of two centuries. But the actual treasure in this incredible contraption is said to be greater than any of our wildest dreams.
The treasure has been said to be over a million pounds in British Gold hidden away during the Revolutionary War, royal jewels from collapsed Russian dynasties, an incredible secret regarding the true location of an even more immense treasure… or nothing at all. And if years of blasting and digging hasn’t destroyed the contents of the chambers, its engineers deserve even more credit than before. Even with the latest in treasure hunting, drilling, and sonar technology the true contents of the final chamber remains unknown.
The space of the chamber could contain anything from a few wooden nickels to a written note signed by an expert jewel thief with a sense of humor. And try as they might, no one has been able to crack the final seal. Explorers did get close, however, and discovered a tunnel and a chamber leading down under where the treasure room is thought to be. Unfortunately it flooded before they could venture further. Years later while attempting to mine around the side of the tunnel another group of borers found a second tunnel alongside evidence that somewhere surely there must be more. Beneath the chamber a rapidly moving subterranean stream has been discovered impeding progress even more. If the chamber were ruptured and the chest were allowed to fall, it may collapse into the stream and be scattered into the ocean or destroyed. Or it may just be buried under yet another layer as the stream pours mud and sediment all over its top, obscuring it forever.
And a few have suggested the contents of the treasure chamber may not be treasure at all. Nonetheless, this chamber has found its way into the permanent history of Treasure Hunters and engineers alike as one of the strangest enigmas ever constructed. And it has stood the test of time long after Mankind made capsules that could break free from the Earth’s gravitational pull and even travel to the Moon. And even though the money pit legend lives on, some even suggest the engineer had not been an engineer at all, but random chance. Some theorists have suggested that the elaborate trap system is really a naturally occurring phenomenon from a sinkhole. If random chance could create an impossible an enigma as this, however, what else could it create?