A rugged bronze chest, stuffed with gold coins, shimmering jewels, and ancient artifacts, was tucked away in the wild heart of the Rocky Mountains. This was the irresistible lure crafted by Forrest Fenn, a former Air Force pilot turned art dealer, who sparked a modern-day treasure hunt in 2010. For 10 years, his $1 million treasure eluded over 300,000 dreamers until a medical student unraveled its secrets in 2020. This is the thrilling, untold story of Fenn’s treasure, its discovery, and the wild legacy it carved across a decade.
Forrest Fenn, born in 1930 in Temple, Texas, lived a life as bold as his treasure hunt. A Vietnam War hero with 328 combat missions and a Silver Star to his name, he later ran Fenn Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico, raking in $6 million a year selling Native American art to clients like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
In 1988, a terminal kidney cancer diagnosis shifted his perspective. Though he beat the odds and survived, the brush with death inspired a grand idea: hide a treasure to ignite adventure in others. By 2010, at age 80, Fenn made it real. He filled a 10x10x5-inch Romanesque bronze chest with gold nuggets, rare coins, a Sinu Indian necklace, and even a jar containing his 20,000-word autobiography, sealed in wax. Valued at over $1 million (later estimated at $2 million), he hid it near trees in the Rockies, above 5,000 feet.
The key to finding it? A cryptic 24-line poem in his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase Available on Amazon. With lines like
“Begin it where warm waters halt /
And take it in the canyon down,”
The poem sent treasure hunters scrambling across New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Over 300,000 joined the chase, forming a vibrant community with online forums and annual Fennboree gatherings at Hyde Memorial State Park. Some quit jobs or moved closer to the Rockies, hooked on the promise of riches and adventure. But the hunt had a dark side.
Five searchers died in pursuit: Randy Bilyeu in 2016, Jeff Murphy and Paris Wallace in 2017, Eric Ashby later that year, and Michael Wayne Sexson in 2020. Others faced arrests for trespassing or damaging cultural sites. Fenn himself wasn’t untouched by controversy; in 2009, the FBI raided his home over artifact looting suspicions, though no charges were filed.
On June 6, 2020, the hunt ended when Jack Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student from Michigan, found the chest in Wyoming. Stuef, who stumbled across the hunt on X in 2018, became obsessed, spending hours daily decoding the poem. Unlike others caught in groupthink or chasing GPS coordinates, he studied Fenn’s personality through interviews, pinpointing the general area in 2018.
After 25 days of searching over two years, he cracked it, despite a damaged “blaze” (the poem’s final clue). Court filings suggest the chest was likely in Yellowstone National Park, possibly near Nine Mile Hole or Firehole River. Still, Stuef keeps the exact spot secret, honoring Fenn’s wishes after his death on September 7, 2020, at age 90.
The discovery didn’t close the book. Legal battles erupted, including a lawsuit from searcher Barbara Andersen, who claimed Stuef hacked her texts to steal her solution. In September 2022, Stuef sold the chest and its contents to Tesouro Sagrado Holdings for an undisclosed sum. That December, Heritage Auctions sold 476 items for $1.3 million, with a 549-gram Alaskan gold nugget fetching $55,200 and the autobiography jar selling for $48,000 Auction Details. Stuef, now out of medicine and eyeing equities investing, shared his story on Medium, offering a glimpse into his triumph Jack Stuef’s Medium Post.
The hunt’s impact rippled far beyond the chest. It fueled New Mexico’s tourism boom, alongside Breaking Bad, and built tight-knit bonds among searchers. Justin Posey, featured in the 2025 Netflix docuseries Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure Watch on Netflix, spent 780 days and $20,000 chasing it, bonding with his father during his cancer treatment. Others found love or lifelong friends, but some lost savings or marriages to the obsession.
A University of North Dakota study noted 10% of online searchers showed addictive behaviors. The community raised $60,000 for a searcher whose home burned, with Fenn matching $10,000, but harassment plagued his family, including a break-in and an extortion attempt.
Fenn’s treasure hunt became a cultural juggernaut, inspiring TV shows like Expedition Unknown, podcasts like X Marks the Spot, and the Netflix series that premiered March 27, 2025. Its legacy lives on, with some items re-hidden by Jon Collins-Black in a new hunt detailed in his 2024 book There’s Treasure Inside. Fenn’s vision to spark adventure succeeded, but at a cost, weaving a saga of thrill, tragedy, and unbreakable human spirit.
