The Curse of Oak Island Garden Shaft: What has the Fellowship found so far, and will they continue excavating?

The Curse of Oak Island Season 11 was primarily centered around the mysterious garden shaft and the guys’ attempts to excavate it and determine its purpose.

Unfortunately, the Fellowship’s efforts to excavate this shaft were beset with setbacks, and at times, it was frankly painful to watch. All work came to a crushing halt after the shaft was flooded toward the end of Season 11. The shaft was deemed unstable, and the whole project was put on the back burner.

So, what do we know about the garden shaft, and what have the Lagina brothers learned?

The garden shaft was an 82-foot-deep structure discovered by the team in the Money Pit area in 2017. The guys initially believed it to be an 18th-century searcher tunnel, so they ignored it and installed a nice garden around the entrance.

All that changed in Season 10 with two fundamental discoveries. The first was the discovery of a high concentration of precious metals in underground water samples from the nearby baby blob.

The second was the revelation that a 95-foot-deep tunnel appeared to lead from the garden shaft to the baby blob.

The Oak Island garden shaft has become a real mystery

The team hired the Dumas mining company to excavate and renovate the shaft so Marty and Rick could go down 95 feet and take a look. However, by the time all the relevant permits had been received, we were into Season 11 before the real work could start.

Since then, they’ve found wood that dates back to before the initial discovery of the Money Pit, and they’ve recovered wood with a high concentration of gold traces.

The Dumas guys drilled to about 95 feet and began probe drilling to the side of the shaft, looking for an offset chamber. Marty has long believed that the treasure is deposited in a secret offset chamber, and he thought it may have been hidden beside the garden shaft.

In the first episode of 2024, the guys even found a small chamber, but unfortunately, it was only filled with a few old planks.

In December 2023, the team received the results of the Muon topography survey, a fantastic piece of technology that mapped the island under the surface. The technology likened to giving the island a medical X-ray, failed to reveal any large chambers near the garden shaft.

Undeterred, the guys plowed on, and in a March 2024 episode, they finally got to that 95-foot-deep tunnel. This, too, turned into a bit of a damp squib because the tunnel turned out to not be a tunnel but just a series of planks. The guys said it looked like someone had removed the tunnel’s walls and ceiling.

Work ceased on the Oak Island garden shaft due to flooding. Can it be salvaged?

The team planned to continue following the tunnel’s suspected course, but a couple of weeks later, water began rushing in at a terrific rate. The Dumas guys were forced to abandon the shaft, which became unstable due to the volume of water.

The Fellowship wondered if they’d hit a booby trap, an ancient flood tunnel that is activated whenever anyone gets too close to the treasure.

Unfortunately, the shaft remains a mystery, and the guys seem no closer to learning its function.

The question remains for The Curse of Oak Island Season 12: can the Garden Shaft be salvaged? The short answer is probably.

But do the Lagina brothers believe it’s worth the cost? The guys have already spent a lot of time and money on the Garden Shaft; frankly, they do not have much to show for it.

As I write, the blogger at Oak Island From The Other Side of the Causeway has posted several pictures from the island showing heavy machinery arriving.

Among the machinery, there appears to be equipment that could be used to pump water out of a large garden shaft-like shaft. But there’s no way to confirm that as yet.

You can be sure that Marty and Rick will pursue any hint of treasure down there.

The Curse of Oak Island Season 12 is expected to return in November 2024 on History.