There they met up with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) expert Dave Paul, who set to work with a 400 MHz GPR device that can detect metal more than two meters below ground level. The team then headed to the area of shore identified from the air, which sits on land owned by the Muskegon Elks Lodge. 5 A GPR device picks up metal under the sand The team using the GPR device, which picked up two anomalies in succession Looking down from above, they see a raised up section of beach and dunes which appears to follow the shoreline - and which they think sits higher than the surrounding ground because it is on top of the old line. To do that he and his brother Al initially took to the skies in a Cessna 172 light aircraft to scope out the part of the Lake Michigan shore where they believe the train tracks to have been. Kevin needs to prove to Marty Lagina that the railroad is there if he’s ever going to get the funding he needs for his later treasure-hunting operations. Did they fund the banks with the gold stolen from Jefferson? 4 The line of the railroad can still be seen from the air The shore of Lake Michigan from the air, with the apparent location of the railroad marked The railroad was finished in 1870 - the same year Pritchard opened the First National Bank of Allegan and Hackley opened the Muskegon National Bank. Kevin believes it was built pretty much specifically to transport the gold, with the line leading right to the back door of the office at Hackley’s lumber operations. Mysteriously, just two years later it was shut down.
3 They believe the gold was transported to Muskegon by the ‘forgotten railroad’ The route the railway is believed to have taken along the shore of Lake MichiganĪ year before Kevin claims the gold was transported from Georgia to Michigan, Hackley apparently authorised the building of a 17-mile track along eastern shore of Lake Michigan between Ferrysburg and Muskegon. After that, his wealth apparently increased exponentially. Get our The Curse of Oak Island newsletter!Īccording to Kevin, shortly after getting to know Pritchard and Minty, Hackley quickly decided to expand his business ventures into the railroad industry. 2 A third man, Charles Hackley, allegedly helped them launder it Charles Hackley, who was a lumber tycoon but later helped fund the forgotten railroadĮven if they could get the gold up to Michigan, how would they set about laundering it? Step in lumber tycoon turned banker Charles Hackley, who Kevin says along with his “crew” put up the funds to get the railroad built. That was until a few years later when Pritchard became the Michigan state land commissioner, which gave him the authority to approve new railroad construction, and when Minty became the superintendant of several railroad companies, including one that was building a new line that stretched from Irwinville to Michigan.
Kevin believes that Minty was the one who informed Pritchard that Jefferson was carrying the Confederate treasury before it got looted in Abbeville, Georgia, but that afterwards the pair had no way to bring it up to Michigan undetected. Minty were made on the premiere, but in Episode 2 we learned a lot more about them and what Kevin thinks it is they got up to. Benjamin Pritchard and his commanding officer Col Robert H.J. Minty, who Kevin Dykstra believes was central to the theft of Confederate gold 1 Kevin thinks two men initiated the looting of the gold Colonel H.J. As we gear up for Episode 3 - which comes days after the FBI oversaw another search for Confederate gold in Pennsylvania - here’s 10 things we learned in The Curse of Civil War Gold Season 1 Episode 2.
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