Every file is labeled so you always know what you're reading: Documented historyLegendFiction / game
Documented records+ an invented map
In 1834 the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Antonio Huertas's claim to 10,000 acres granted under Spanish rule. The record counts ten children and fourteen enslaved people, but names none of them. What happened to the land, and to them?
Your mission: Open eight locks using real evidence cards.
Read and play free →Documented history
In 1740, General James Oglethorpe's British forces bombarded St. Augustine's stone fort for weeks. Instead of shattering, the walls seemed to swallow the cannonballs. The Spanish had built with coquina, a soft stone made of compressed seashells.
Your mission: Find the shells in the walls.
Read the full file →Documented history
In late 1702, forces from English Carolina under Governor James Moore marched on St. Augustine. About 1,500 residents, soldiers and families crowded inside the Castillo for nearly two months. The siege failed, but as the English retreated they burned the town. When the gates opened, the people had survived and their city was gone.
Your mission: Stand on the fort's green and picture 1,500 people sheltering behind those walls. How would you feed them all?
Documented history
In 1693, Spain's king offered freedom to people who escaped slavery in the English colonies and reached Spanish Florida. Many made the dangerous journey south. In 1738 the colonial governor established Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, about two miles north of town, led by militia captain Francisco Menéndez. It's recognized as the first legally sanctioned free African settlement in what is now the United States.
Your mission: Visit the boardwalk and look out at the marsh where the fort once stood.
Documented history
The black-and-white striped tower on Anastasia Island was first lit in 1874, but the Spanish kept watch from this coast long before. Beneath the waves, maritime archaeologists have studied shipwrecks, including one believed to be a ship lost on December 31, 1782, as British Loyalists fled Charleston.
Your mission: Count the stripes on the tower. Then ask yourself why a lighthouse would need a pattern at all.
History + legend
Juan Ponce de León reached Florida in 1513. That much is documented. The idea that he was hunting a magic spring was attached to his story by writers after his death. What is real is the ground itself: archaeologists have connected the area to the Timucua town of Seloy and the site of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés's 1565 settlement.
Your mission: Decide for yourself: why do people love the legend more than the history?
Documented history
Just outside the City Gate is a small burial ground opened in 1821, the year Florida became American territory, as a resting place for Protestants. That same year, yellow fever swept through the town. Each weathered stone holds a real name, a real family and a real story.
Your mission: View respectfully from the fence. Find the oldest date you can read.
Documented history
Railroad and Standard Oil partner Henry Flagler visited in the 1880s and decided to turn St. Augustine into a winter resort for the wealthy. His Hotel Ponce de León opened in 1888, with electric lights and Tiffany glass windows. Today it's Flagler College.
Your mission: Look for the sun, sea and Spanish symbols in the courtyard gates.
Documented history
During the 1740 siege, the British tried to blockade the city by sea, but small supply boats could slip in through Matanzas Inlet, about 14 miles south. Spain decided never to leave that back door open again. By 1742 a coquina watchtower stood guard over the inlet.
Your mission: Take the ferry to the tower and look out at the inlet it protected.
Documented history
This narrow brick lane is named for Avilés, the Spanish hometown of the city's founder, and is often called the oldest street in the United States. Spanish soldiers, British officers, American innkeepers and modern artists have all called it home.
Your mission: Walk it slowly. Find one detail that looks older than everything around it.
History+ a fictional treasure game
In 1586, Sir Francis Drake attacked and burned St. Augustine. In 1668 the raider Robert Searle sacked the town again. To England, men like this were often licensed privateers. To Spain, they were pirates. Searle's raid helped convince Spain to build a stone fortress, which began in 1672.
Your mission: The treasure part is fiction, and that's where our Lost Treasure family hunt begins.
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