A NEW QUEST FOR THE OAK ISLAND TREASURE HUNTERS?

In the past few weeks, the Oak Island crew have been getting excited over turning up a bow bulkhead and a few fragments of oars from a rowboat in the swamp.  But now they have to stop digging in the swamp to give the freshwater spring that keeps it wet a chance to refill it, in order to use that fresh water to sift through the dirt they expect to dig out of their ten foot caissons that might, by brute force, reveal whatever remains of what might have been dug into Oak Island.

In the Walker's Point neighborhood of Milwaukee, however, there's legend of a hardware store built atop a shipwreck.

Twenty feet below the building, according in part to an 1874 report, rests the hull of the wrecked schooner Cincinnati.

The steamship collided with the S.S. Milwaukie and was stripped for pieces before being dumped on what is today solid ground. But to create that ground, the ship had to have layers of oak ties laid atop it, mixed with layers of sand and cement. A three-layer stone foundation separates the structure from the supposed ship.

That same 1874 report, written in a boosterish style, notes that Nazro’s new hardware store was “the largest hardware store in the world” when completed. Its location was just a couple blocks from the now-long-gone Milwaukee Union Depot railroad station.

Yes, once upon a time, the 100 block of South Second was waterfront, and the "Union Depot" that article refers to is the Reed Street passenger station, which was about where The Milwaukee Road later built a freight house.

There are no legends of Cincinnati having been buried there to conceal Spanish treasure, or secret machine tool parts purloined by Milwaukee machinists.