MYSTERY OF THE MONEY PIT

Posted on Sep 7, 2008 in Lost Treasure

THE DISCOVERY

One spring day in 1795 Daniel McGinnis, then a teenager, was wandering around Oak Island, Nova Scotia when he came across a curious circular depression in the ground.

Standing over this depression was a tree whose branches had been cut in a way which looked like it had been used as a pulley. Having heard tales of pirates hiding their treasure in the area McGinnis hurried home to tell his friends. Over the next several days McGinnis and two other boys worked furiously on the hole. What they found astonished them.

Click Image to Enlarge

Two feet below the surface they came across a layer of flagstones covering the pit. At ten feet they found a platform of oak logs wedged into the shaft’s walls. Ripping it out they excavated another ten feet. There they found another platform, then another one ten feet lower. Frustrated by the barriers, the boys eventually returned to their farm chores.

Eight years later, in 1803, the three boys returned to Oak Island to continue the hunt. They were adults now and had the financial backing of a syndicate of Nova Scotia businessmen who called themselves The Onslow Company.

The excavation picked up where it had left off eight years before and more oak platforms were discovered – every ten feet. Besides the boards, at 40 feet a layer of charcoal was found, at 50 feet a layer of putty, and at 60 feet a layer of coconut fiber.

At 90 feet one of the most puzzling clues was found – a stone tablet inscribed with mysterious writing:

It turned out to be a simple substitution cipher where each symbol inscribed on the stone corresponded to a letter in the alphabet. When decoded the cipher read:

“FORTY FEET BELOW TWO MILLION POUNDS ARE BURIED”

As nightfall descended the digging had to be stopped due to poor visibility – the treasure would have to wait one more day.

The group returned to Oak Island the next day eager to recover treasure only to find the shaft completely flooded with seawater. No matter how hard they tried, all attempts to pump out the water failed.

Booby Trap!
Many believe that the flooding was part of an elaborate booby trap built to protect the Money Pit’s secret. Later excavations discovered an intricate rock-lined tunnel system that directed seawater from the ocean into the shaft. The water had been held back by a barrier that was tripped during the excavation.

Unwilling to give up on the treasure, the group dug a separate shaft next to the original in order to allow the flood water to drain out.

But the plan turned out to be a disaster – the walls of the new shaft collapsed leaving the original shaft flooded once again. The diggers were lucky to escape with their lives.

The pit was abandoned for 45 years.

OBSESSION

Over the next 200 years the Money Pit’s secrets obsessed scores of people – an endless procession of individuals and corporations descended upon the island to take up the hunt.

The lure of the unknown attracted all types of adventurers – some of the more noteworthy were: soon to be US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, explorer Richard Byrd, and actor Errol Flynn who wanted to search Oak Island in 1940, but was discouraged when he found the search rights already belonged to a company owned by fellow actor John Wayne.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and friends
working the Money Pit in 1910.

Despite the millions of dollars invested, and the increasingly sophisticated tools at searchers disposal, the contents of the Oak Island Money Pit have remained out of reach.

One indian legend has it that the search will end only after all the island’s oaks are dead, and seven treasure hunters have lost their lives in the search. By 1990, six diggers had died and only three oaks remained on the island.

RECENT DISCOVERIES

Around 1967, Daniel C. Blankenship and David Tobias formed The Triton Alliance, Ltd. and purchased most of the island. In 1971, Triton workers excavated a 235-foot shaft supported by a steel caisson. According to Blankenship and Tobias, cameras lowered down the shaft into a cave below recorded the presence of some chests, human remains, wooden cribbing and tools; however, the images were unclear, and none of these claims have been officially confirmed. Work was eventually halted due to lack of funds and the collapse of the partnership.

Exploration was stalled in the 90s due to legal battles between the Triton partners, but recently Dan Blankenship and his new partners, the Michigan Group have worked things out and further exploration of the Money Pit will continue this year (2008).

WHAT TREASURE LIES AT THE BOTTOM OF THE MONEY PIT?

The pit has yielded few clues to what it may hold. Three links of chain, iron scissors of Spanish manufacture, a carved-bone boson’s whistle, and a scrap of parchment are among the few artifacts to be raised.

Coconut fiber has also been found, although the nearest coconut trees are 1,500 miles away – coconut fiber was used to pack cargo on seventeenth and eighteenth-century ships.

One of the most tantalizing discoveries was a heart-shaped stone similar to those found among pirate treasure-troves in Haiti.

There are many theories as to what the Money Pit may hold but my three favorites are:

THEORY #1 – THE TREASURE OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

The tale of the Knights Templar’s Lost Treasure is well known among treasure hunting buffs. In the early hours of October 13th, 1307, King Philip IV of France ordered all the Knights Templar arrested on trumped up charge of heresy – and their fabled treasure confiscated in the name of the crown. But when the King’s men arrived at the Templar’s Paris Headquarters the treasure had vanished as had almost the entire Templar naval fleet.

The Templars were now wanted men in most of Europe, so, the theory goes that desiring to establish a new Templar government outside the reach of French persecution, the Templars sailed westward towards Nova Scotia where they established a colony.

The presence of the Knights Templar in Novia Scotia a century before Columbus discovered America may sound far-fetched, but it is supported by a Zeno narrative and map that depicts the landmass of Nova Scotia (New Scotland) with the figure of a crowned knight drawn upon it (one of the Templar’s Symbols).

At some point, the theory goes, the Templars decided to abandon their colony and head back to Europe, but with the order weakened and fearing their treasure might fall into the wrong hands, they decided to hide it. They constructed the money pit to protect their treasure until such a time they could return for it.

Which they obviously never did.

To this day none of the Templar treasure has been found. Their treasure is rumored to contain artifacts of spiritual significance retrieved by the order during the Crusades, including the genealogies of David and Jesus and documents that trace these bloodlines into the royal bloodlines of Merovingian France.

THEORY #2 – CAPTAIN KIDD’S TREASURE

Legends abound about the numerous secret caches of treasure buried by Kidd throughout his illustrious career as a Pirate. One legend told of a dying sailor in the New England Colonies who confessed to being a part of Kidd’s notorious crew.

The old sailor stated that Captain Kidd had buried a hoard of treasure to be found on an island “east of Boston”, but he never named an exact location for the hidden booty. Could it have been Oak Island?

Skeptics claim that Kidd spent little time near Nova Scotia, suggesting that he could not have devoted enough time to constructing the money pit.

THEORY #3 – INCA OR MAYA TREASURE

During the conquest of the Americas by the Europeans in the mid 1500s much of the wealth of the Incas and Mayas disappeared. There are two persistent legends about where much of this treasure went – if you want to know more check out these two articles:

Montezuma’s Gold

Inca Gold: The Treasure of the Llanganatis

Some researchers believe it’s possible that a group of Incas or Mayas, possibly with the help of sympathetic Europeans, stole away with the wealth and buried it on Oak Island out of the reach of the conquerors.

RESOURCES

For more information about the Money Pit visit http://www.oakislandtreasure.co.uk/ – this is the most comprehensive site I’ve found on the subject and a great place to start your research.

http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/mystery-of-the-money-pit/#more-1315

MONTEZUMA’S GOLD

Posted on Sep 15, 2008 in Lost Treasure

 

February 1519 a fleet of eleven Spanish ships landed on the coast of Mexico near the modern day port of Vera Cruz. Onboard was a force of nearly six hundred Conquistadors; led by the infamous Hernán Cortés, they had come to Mexico to conquer the land and convert its people to Christianity in the name of the Holy Roman Church… And if they all got filthy rich in the process — that was okay too!

Hernan Cortés

When news of the strange, white-skinned men reached the Aztec emperor, Montezuma, he must have been reminded of the prophecy of Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec sun god, which stated that one day the god would return to the land of the Aztec to claim his throne – and he would be known by his shining hair and white skin.

Montezuma dispatched servants bearing rich gifts for the newly arrived gods in hopes that they would go away and leave him in charge. But Montezuma’s plan backfired – when Cortés saw the precious objects, crafted from gold and silver, he knew he’d come to the right place – he immediately set his sights on the Aztec’s capitol city of Tenochtitlán, (present day Mexico City).

On November 18, 1519, Cortés entered the Aztec capital and was received as a god at a lavish ceremony in Montezuma’s palace.

Montezuma was use to being at the top of the food-chain, so after the ceremony he once again tried to persuade Cortés and his men to leave the city by offering more gifts of gold and silver, but this just intensified the Spaniards lust for gold. Cortés placed Montezuma under house arrest and then, along with about 600 native Tlaxcalan allies, the Spaniards set up base in one of the Aztec’s many ceremonial temples.

Montezuma’s Treasure
Gathered through years of brutal conquests over other Mesoamerican civilizations, Montezuma’s treasury was vast. According to legend his horde included: two gold collars, a huge alligator’s head of gold, one hundred ounces of gold, birds and other sculptures studded with precious gems, wheels of gold and silver in different sizes and many other priceless objects.

With Montezuma imprisoned the conquistadors went about ransacking his palace where they found a secret vault so full of treasure that it took three days just to divide the spoils. It was enough to make every Spaniard rich beyond his wildest dreams – but still they wanted more…

In the following months Cortés began a bloody campaign of terror. His men terrorized the city, torturing and killing it’s inhabitants in an attempt to obtain even more treasure – including the location of the fabled city of El Dorado.

REBELLION

The Aztecs eventually grew weary of the Spaniard’s tyranny, and over time they began to question Cortés’ divinity as well, so when a group of conquistadors destroyed one of the cities main temples, and slaughtered it’s high priests, things turned against the Spaniards.

The Emperor Montezuma

On June 30, 1520, the Aztec people rose against the Spaniards. Cortés forced the imprisoned Montezuma to appear upon the piazza of his house in an attempt to pacify his subjects. But apparently, the people had had enough of Montezuma as well. The Emperor was stoned to death by his own people.

With their hostage dead, Cortés and his men were forced to flee the city. They retreated amid a full on uprising, attacked from all sides by Aztec spears and stones. As the conquistadors fled the city, they threw down their newly won fortunes, littering the cities’ network of concentric irrigation channels with the treasure they had stolen from Montezuma’s treasury.

Many of Cortés’ men died on that dark and rainy night. It’s said that the bodies of the dead were piled so high in the citie’s canals that one could walk across them, from one side to the next – a grisly bridge of corpses. The night came to be known as La Noche Triste (The Sad Night).

RETRIBUTION

Cortés rebuilt his army and a year later returned to Tenochtitlan. On August 13, 1521, with the help of his Tlaxcalan allies, Cortés took the city back. The new Aztec emperor, Cuauhtémoc, was captured while fleeing the city and tortured to reveal the locations of the Aztec treasure. But even with his feet held in a fire, the doomed Emperor couldn’t produce more than a canoe full of trinkets. According to Cuauhtémoc, the treasure was forever lost.

In desperation Cortés allowed for the torturing of anybody who he thought might help him discover the location of the treasure, men, women or children.

As the story goes, the only information ever gleaned by torturing these poor people was that the treasure had been taken north and hidden at the bottom of a lake. Cortés would later search approximately 5,000 lakes in the surrounding regions in an effort to find Montezuma’s treasure…

He never did.

WHERE DID MONTEZUMA’S TREASURE GO?

There are many theories about what happened to Montezuma’s Treasure. Some historians believe that it remains right where it was dropped that fateful night when the Conquistadors fled from Tenochtitlan, buried for all time beneath layers of silt and cement of modern day Mexico city.

Others believe the treasure was retrieved from the irrigation channels by the Spaniards when they took the city back, sent to Spain, then lost at sea when the ship that carried it was sunk by a tropical storm. But surely the most interesting theory involves an incredible journey of Biblical proportion.

EXODUS

There’s a persistent tale handed down by descendants of the Aztecs in Costa Rica – it goes a little something like this:

When Cortés and his soldiers were driven from Tenochtitlan on La Noche Triste, the Aztec high Priests knew it would only be a matter of time before the Spaniards returned. They realize that they could not defend against the conquistador’s superior weapons forever – their civilization was doomed.

The priests dug up the body of their fallen leader, Montezuma, then led a procession of more than 2,000 men on a mass exodus in search a new land to the north, a land that would be safe from the barbaric Spaniards.

The priests took with them the collected treasures of the Aztec empire, tons of gold and silver in the form of sacred religious objects they would need to reestablish their once great civilization.

According to the legend, the treasure-bearing slaves traveled in a northwesterly direction for many moons, and when they came to a mountain on the edge of a desert, the treasure was hidden and the slaves put to death.

There is much disagreement about just how far north the exodus traveled, but certainly the most interesting theory circulating among the treasure hunting community is that the treasure was carried over two thousand miles to southern Utah… Yep, that’s right… Aztec treasure in Utah.

THE STRANGE STORY OF FREDDY CRYSTAL

According to legend, In 1920 Freddy Crystal, a miner and amateur treasure hunter was in Mexico city searching through an old church that had been tagged for demolition when he found a treasure map tucked inside a long forgotten manuscript.

The manuscript, written by a Spanish Friar at the time of the conquest of Tenochtitlan, stated that the map had been drawn using information gained during the torture of one of the original Aztec porters of Montezuma’s treasure, and if followed would lead directly to the cache. According to the manuscript the Spaniards tried for many years to follow the map but were unfamiliar with the territories to the North and eventually gave up in frustration.

Crystal had spent time in Utah several years before trying to decipher Aztec petroglyphs on the canyon walls, so when he saw the old map he realized that some of the landmarks depicted on it were similar to the geography of Southern Utah… or rather, one place in particular that was on the outskirts of a little town by the name of Kanab.

THE TREASURE HUNT OF THE CENTURY

Crystal made a bee-line back to Southern Utah where the map lead him to Johnson Canyon. He immediately found signs that he was in the right place, Aztec petroglyphs littered the area and clues on the map eventually directed him to an ancient set of stairs cut directly into the side of White Mountain.

Crystal followed the steps up to a sealed entrance which he broke down revealing a long dark corridor. On both sides of the corridor were ancient statues. Crystal thought he’d hit the jackpot – now he just needed help excavating the plethora of tunnels in the surrounding area; so he headed into the town of Kanab to try and recruit diggers.

The Kanabites were well aware of the Aztec petroglyphs in the area and had heard stories of Montezuma’s Treasure since they were kids, so when Crystal presented his collection of clues it started a veritable gold rush.

Johnson Canyon Tunnels
Many of the tunnels in Johnson Canyon are still accessible, though the Department of Oil Gas and Mining (OGM) announced recently that they were going to begin back-filling the tunnels. A Utah group called Gold Rush Expeditions is spearheading the drive to keep these historic tunnels open for future generations to explore.

Hundreds of people volunteer for the chance to participate in the greatest treasure hunt of all time. A coalition was organized by the town council in which people could volunteer a certain number of hours per week to the excavation in exchange for a share of the treasure; at one point as many as 75% of the population of Kanab was involved in the treasure hunt.

The excavation went on for almost three years, clearing deadfall after deadfall, finding relics and ancient items, but never the gold. Finally, with the tunnels all reopened and no gold found the townspeople drifted back to their day to day lives and forget about the tunnels up in Johnson canyon.

Some believe the treasure was actually buried at the base of White Mountain, which unfortunately is now buried under tons of rock and dirt from the Crystal excavations.

OTHER THEORIES ON THE TREASURE’S LOCATION

There are many other theories about what happened to Montezuma’s Treasure, but none of them are half as fun as the Utah theory:

The Grand Canyon

There are similar legends of Aztec Treasure in the Grand Canyon which you can read all about in this article called The Aztec Treasure Cavern, originally published in Treasure Magazine.

Lake Tezcuco

Some believe that when the inhabitants of Tenochtitlán got wind of the Spaniards return, they buried the remains of the city’s treasure in and around Lake Tezcuco to prevent it from falling prey to the gold-crazed Conquistadors. Today, a vast treasure trove may still remain hidden beneath nearly five centuries of mud and sludge on the outskirts of Mexico City, the modern day incarnation of Tenochtitlán. Generations of treasure seekers have sought the lost hoard without success. A former president of Mexico even had the lake bed dredged, but no treasure was found.

Guatemala

According to information first discovered by an archaeologist named Thomas Gann, Montezuma’s treasure was not sent north, but south into the jungles of Guatemala to keep it from the Spanish.

The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine – Arizona

Some believe there’s a link between the Legendary Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine and Montezuma’s Gold. Jacob Waltz, (the Dutchman) found a source of pure, raw gold in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona, a location geologists say is devoid of gold deposits. It’s this apparently lack of mineral evidence which has led some researchers to speculate that the Dutchman may have actually stumbled over Montezuma’s fabled Lost Aztec Treasure.

http://www.thelifeofadventure.com/montezumas-gold/#more-1145