Oak Island

Oak Island is a small wooded island at the northern head of Mahone Bay, joined to the mainland by a causeway since 1965 and otherwise unremarkable in size, geology, or vegetation. What makes it famous is the Money Pit — a shaft on the eastern end of the island that has been dug, redug, flooded, drained, and excavated by treasure hunters since 1795, and that has so far yielded a handful of inconclusive artefacts and an enormous quantity of theory. The History Channel reality series "The Curse of Oak Island," now in its second decade, has made the place a destination in a way it never was when it was just a slow Nova Scotian curiosity.

Most of the island is private and the active dig site cannot be visited unescorted. Oak Island Tours runs guided walks during the warm months, leaving from the visitor centre on Crandall's Point at the mainland end of the causeway, with a small interpretive exhibit covering the history of the search, the principal theories, and the genuine engineering of the original shaft and the so-called flood tunnels. The tour does not include the active dig, but it does cover the original Money Pit area. Booking ahead in summer is essential — tours sell out.

things to do sight nature
A story
In 1795, a teenager named Daniel McGinnis is said to have noticed a circular depression on the otherwise unremarkable Oak Island and started digging. Two centuries, a flooded shaft, six lives, and many millions of dollars later, no one has yet brought up whatever the diggers convinced themselves was buried — and there is still vigorous argument over whether anything was ever there at all. The "Money Pit" has been variously connected to Captain Kidd, the Knights Templar, Francis Bacon, the Lost Ark, and Shakespeare's manuscripts, none of which has been remotely substantiated.