The Money Pit Mystery: The Costliest Treasure Hunt Ever

If you love a good true life mystery, The Money Pit Mystery is a book for you. It has everything: buried treasure, speculations of Captain Kidd and Blackbeard's involvement, two centuries of frustrating and costly prospecting, an American president's pick and shovel interest, ghosts, and, finally, Rupert Furneaux's revelation that likely there was no treasure in the Money Pit all along. The story begins in 1795 when a young man found a depression beneath a tree and block and tackle hanging from a limb above. The site was on Oak Island, near the Nova Scotia coast and about 50 miles southwest of Halifax. The excited fellow and his friends started digging. They soon found a layer of flagstones at four feet and and a layer of oak planking six feet below that. Every ten feet deeper was another layer of planking. When no tresure was uncovered, their spadework slowed then was abandoned. A few years later the digging was resumed by others and then by others after them. In 1850, when the shaft reached 110 feet, the hole suddenly flooded. The water stopped the excavation but only heightened interest in the mystery of the Money Pit. After that and over the next century one group after another got involved in the digging. In 1909 Franklin Roosevelt invested in a mining engineer's proposal that was expected to "solve in a jiffy the difficulties Captain Kidd made to guard his treasure." No such luck, but others kept trying. Finally... well, Rupert Furneaux, the book's author and a historical puzzle solver extraordinaire, solved the Money Pit mystery but didn't get the gold. As to who did get the treasure, how the money was removed from the pit, why the oak planking, and where the water came from.... You'd curse me if I told you the answer, but if you read the book, you'll say, "Right on, this is the best treasure hunt story ever and (almost) as good as (or better than) the search for Tutankhamen.