# "Buried Treasure"-Real or Myth?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [April 9, 2007, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354 "2007-04-09T19:23:06Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 10\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Scubaqueen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c0e974/32.png) [@Scubaqueen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scubaqueen)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/21 "2007-04-10T19:04:21Z")

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[QUOTE=MGibson]  
\>snip\< There’s Oak Island, which is near Nova Scotia or Newfoundland I think, where there is supposedly some buried treasure. Since the 19th century a few people have died trying to excavate the thing and they’ve only recovered a few gold chain links. I don’t know if there’s actually any treasure there though. For the most part, buried treasure is just a myth. People don’t just bury vast amounts of wealth and then forget about them. Pyramids and other tombs nonwithstanding.  
Marc  
[/QUOTE]

nova scotia. somebody went to a HELL of a lot of trouble to create the money pit. why all that if there isn’t something to it? , something like six deaths connected to it, and the current owners are still trying to find the bottom at nearly 200 feet, last i read:

[http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/OakIsland/story.html](http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/OakIsland/story.html)

also, lincoln child and douglas preston (authors of ‘the relic’) wrote a nifty fictional retelling of the whole money pit story called ‘riptide.’

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**Author:** ![lieu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c2a13f/32.png) [@lieu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lieu)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/22 "2007-04-10T19:09:24Z")

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There’s a very recognizable landmark, 7 hoodoos, in SE Colorado we visited on a field trip once. Our guide had taken another group there the week before. He said as they were mulling about, someone tripped over something at one of the hoodoo’s base. Looking down, the tripee noticed a bit of flint sticking out of the ground. He pulled it out and, lo, a Clovis Point. Digging into the sand, they found another 6 or 7, all apparently buried there by some ancient traveller, intent on recovering them his next time through, but who never made it back.

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**Author:** ![LonesomePolecat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a88e57/32.png) [@LonesomePolecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LonesomePolecat)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/23 "2007-04-10T19:44:25Z")

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You might try searching for the legendary [lost Confederate gold](http://www.lincolncountyga.org/Chennault%20Plantation.htm) if you need some romantic adventure in your life. Okay, it’s not “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” but it’s something to daydream about.

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**Author:** ![Sonia\_Montdore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/90ced4/32.png) [@Sonia\_Montdore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sonia_Montdore)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/24 "2007-04-10T20:19:28Z")

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Here’s a tale of pirate treasure buried in the woods of Lynn, Massachusetts: [http://www.flw.org/dungeonrockhistory.htm](http://www.flw.org/dungeonrockhistory.htm)

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**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\
**Post date:** [April 10, 2007, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/25 "2007-04-10T21:45:06Z")

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[QUOTE=Phase42]  
Some of D.B. Cooper’s money was found on the bank of the Columbia River in 1980.  
[/QUOTE]

And someday, we’ll find old D.B. there, too.  
No way he made it out alive.

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**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 4:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/26 "2007-04-11T04:21:30Z")

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I remember now there are also tales of buried Japanese war booty in various places in the Philippines.

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**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/27 "2007-04-11T07:17:36Z")

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[QUOTE=MGibson]

There’s Oak Island, which is near Nova Scotia or Newfoundland I think, where there is supposedly some buried treasure. Since the 19th century a few people have died trying to excavate the thing and they’ve only recovered a few gold chain links. I don’t know if there’s actually any treasure there though.  
[/QUOTE]

Cecil’s take: [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_441.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_441.html)

My take? Hoax.

Oh sure we have lots of \*lost \*treasure- sunken ships and what not. But pirates \*spent it \* not buried it.

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**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/28 "2007-04-11T14:09:50Z")

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[QUOTE=DrDeth]  
Cecil’s take: [http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2\_441.html](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_441.html)

My take? Hoax.

Oh sure we have lots of \*lost \*treasure- sunken ships and what not. But pirates \*spent it \* not buried it.  
[/QUOTE]

Yes, Oak island: there is NO way that men working with picks and shovels could have built this thing. Also, Oak island is too far away from the carribean to have been usesd as a pirate stash. My guess is, it was built by either the french or British military , and anything stored there was removed long ago.

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**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/29 "2007-04-11T14:15:04Z")

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Agreed on Oak Island – I think the tale has grown in the telling, but it’s not real.

That’s why I like the Preston/Childs novel **Riptide** (mentioned upthread) – it takes the fantasy and runs with it, positing a real pirate’s treasure stored in a trap-laden Money Pit designed by a Christopher Wren-like Master Architect. Lotsa Blood and Guts and those miraculous still-working mechanisms and deadfalls, and a real Treasure (With A Surprise Curse). Definite brain-off fun.

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**Author:** ![Ivorybill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ee59a6/32.png) [@Ivorybill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ivorybill)\
**Post date:** [April 11, 2007, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/buried-treasure-real-or-myth/399354/30 "2007-04-11T17:01:17Z")

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Continuing with the lost loot of the Confederacy sub-topic:

There’s a story currently making the rounds in New Orleans that a member of a largely Hispanic carpentry crew found a large sack full of pre-1861 $20.00 gold pieces hidden in the wall of an old house on Espanade Avenue a few months ago. Said laborer took the sack and headed back home with it, apparently.

We only found roach droppings, gecko eggs, dust, and silverfish when we renovated our old house. But I did scrawl “P.G.T. Beauregard, 1870” in pencil inside one of the walls before we closed it back up.

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