This week on The Curse of Oak Island, the guys are surprised and delighted to dig up wood from a depth that means it must be connected to the Money Pit.
This was a great fast-paced episode, which brought us lots of intriguing discoveries and answers, albeit not always the answers that the team or us viewers wanted. But it does feel like the guys are making real progress.
Since Craig Tester arrived back on the island last week with his borehole drilling chart, he’s reinvigorated the search in the Money Pit area, and we’re now starting to see some positive results.
The guys have unearthed some more wood, nothing unusual about that, you might say, but there was something unexpected, this wood was at 185 feet, which is significantly deeper than anything found previously.
In fact, according to the historical record, none of the previous searchers have built anything deeper than 170 ft, which was the depth Irwin Hamilton reached with his tunnel in 1940.
That means that this wood must have been placed there by depositors. It could be one of the infamous flood tunnels designed to keep out treasure hunters, or it could be part of the actual Money Pit.
Guys asked ‘Is this the Money Pit?’
The guys were unable to hide their excitement as they discussed the possible options. They agreed that the whole area is promising, with lots going on under the surface. Steve Guptill didn’t mess about though. He said, “One option is we could be in the Money Pit.”
They discussed whether or not to drill even deeper. When Craig briefed Marty Lagina on the situation, the latter seemed confused as to why they hadn’t already started digging deeper.
They sent the drill back down, this time to a depth of 210 feet, and Terry Matheson and Charles Barkhouse eagerly poured over the spoils with fingers crossed that they’d find some wood or even treasure. Nothing. Nothing but clay.
The guys were visibly disappointed; they had hoped they’d finally found the collapsed Money Pit. But not all is lost; they might have just missed it this time.
They decided that the wood at 185 ft was most likely from a tunnel, so the next step is to reposition the drill and to try to follow the tunnel, hopefully, all the way to the Money Pit.
Gary Drayton’s find of the week
Also this week, there was huge excitement when everyone thought that Gary Dayton had unearthed a gold or gold-plated knob/handle.
Unfortunately, the bubble was burst by a combination of Laird Niven and expert Sandy Campbell, who pointed out it was just a fancy brass knob. Not all bad news, though, as Campbell said it was a high-end expensive handle most likely from a jewel box. But where are the contents?
Also this week, we saw the mystery of the Serpent Mound solved definitively. This snake-shaped feature was discovered just a few weeks ago, and the guys had wondered if it was related to other serpent mounds discovered in North America that date back 1000s of years.
However, archaeologists Aaron Taylor and Miriam Amirault concluded that it was not one of these mounds, but simply a pile of rubble, probably the spoils from another excavation. Perhaps more intriguingly, it could be, as Marty suggested, spoils from the Money Pit.
The Curse of Oak Island airs at 9/8c on History.