Bridgewater Bulletin

Hungry for treasure - Oak Island tours attract crowds

By CHLOË ERNST
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OAK ISLAND — Oak Island has been closed to the public since Noah Klotz-Mosher was born. But the 10 year old finally got a chance to see the famed money pit on August 12, the first time Oak Island has been open to the public in a decade.

“Oak Island is a really big mystery to me,” says Noah.

“I think that the mystery about Oak Island, when there are so many mysteries that it could be, there has to be one or two that are real.”

On August 12, about 75 people toured the island as part of Explore Oak Island Day, organized by the Oak Island Tourism Society. Another 100 people toured the island on August 14.

Society member Danny Hennigar, who led the tours, was delighted with the interest.“It exceeded my expectations,” says Mr. Hennigar. “We were inundated with phone calls.”

But he’s not too surprised that so many people want a look at the island where treasure hunters have been digging for over 200 years.

“It’s in our backyard and Oak Island is known around the world,” he says.Mr. Hennigar last led a public tour of the
island in 1975.

“You hear about it, you read about it, it’s on TV and it’s in your backyard, so here’s your chance to go see it.”

One of the special guests at the Explore Oak Island event was Jo Atherton, who runs a web site about the Oak Island mystery. She had never seen the island before and travelled from Hartfordshire, England to take the tour.

When she was nine, Ms Atherton read a story about Oak Island in a large book of different mysteries.

“As soon as I read it, that was it. I got it under my skin and it couldn’t rest,” she says.

Ever since, Ms Atherton has read anything she could find about the mystery.But the island was different than she had imagined.

“The impressions that I had are from the very scarce images that are out there at the moment,” she says, adding she thought the island would be more of a building site than a wooded area with gravel roads.

“It really is a beautiful place ... and it’s important to conserve some of that if it is opened up to the public.”

Noah, however, would like to let the mystery remain buried for awhile.

“I think they should just let it lie ... and then go back to it once they have more technology,” he says.

He studied Oak Island for a heritage project at the Gold River-Western Shore Elementary School and now has his own long-term plans for treasure hunting.

“I would wait probably a while ... [until] the island is totally deserted and there’s new technology. I would probably go on the island then and look for the treasure — with new gas tanks, new air tanks.”

And while he believes in the mystery, he, like many others, is not sure what lies buried deep in the ground.

He says one of his friends thinks the treasure is the Holy Grail and another thinks it is a golden statue.

“But I think it’s a chest full of probably a whole bunch of things.”

Despite the prospects of treasure, many on the tour were also enthusiastic about developing the island into a tourist attraction.

Mr. Hennigar believes Oak Island should be preserved and opened to the public. Currently, Oak Island Tours Inc. is looking to sell 78 per cent of the island — the area where most treasure hunters have searched over the years.

“If a developer buys it, I hope a developer buys it with a good attitude that he or she would like to do something with Oak Island that includes the history of Oak Island,” he says.

“We’ll have Explore Oak Island next year,” says Mr. Hennigar. “And in the meantime, I hope the government makes a move on Oak Island to buy it.”