Rick Lagina became fascinated with Oak Island at age eleven after reading a January 1965 Reader's Digest article about the Restall family's treasure hunt, and he got his younger brother Marty interested as well.

Marty and Rick Lagina purchased a controlling interest in Oak Island Tours, the company that owns most of the island, in 2006, before being approached by production company Prometheus Entertainment to create a reality show.

Dan Blankenship, who had been searching Oak Island for nearly 50 years and dove to the bottom of the 235-foot-deep Borehole 10-X, was first drawn to the island by the same 1965 Reader's Digest article that inspired the Lagina brothers; he died in 2019 at age 95 before season 7 was filmed.

Fred Nolan, a land surveyor who feuded with Dan Blankenship for decades, was eventually convinced to join the team in season 3, but it was later revealed that despite owning a house on Oak Island he never actually spent a night there.

David MacDonald, the author of the original 1965 Reader's Digest article that first drew treasure hunters to the island, appeared in season 3 and contributed a copy of the magazine to a time capsule buried next to the Oak Island bicentennial memorial.

The show has featured numerous independent researchers presenting theories about the island's mystery, including Zena Halpern's idea of North African gold and Knights Templar involvement, J. Hutton Pulitzer's ancient mariner theory, Petter Amundsen's theory of codes hidden in Shakespearean literature tied to Francis Bacon and the Rosicrucians, and John O'Brien's theory involving Aztec Empire treasure.

Despite centuries of excavation on the small island, some viewers and critics have speculated that the show is a hoax or that any treasure that once existed has already been removed.

The franchise has spawned several spin-offs and companion shows, including The Curse of Oak Island: Drilling Down, The Curse of Civil War Gold (which follows Marty and Alex Lagina hunting for missing Confederate gold), Behind the Dig, Digging Deeper, Beyond Oak Island, and Tales From Oak Island.