Treasure hunters have run into trouble there a couple times every year, Johnson said. Many seem to think the poem’s clues lead to Dinosaur National Monument, a rugged, desert area known for dinosaur fossils on the Utah-Colorado line near Wyoming. Air Force fighter pilot in the Vietnam War and retired Santa Fe art and antiquities dealer, Fenn announced June 6 that a man from “back East” he didn’t know - and who didn’t want to be named - a few days earlier found the antique chest containing coins, gold nuggets and other valuables.įenn stashed the chest in 2010 somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming or Montana, he wrote in “The Thrill of the Chase,” a memoir with a 24-line poem he claimed led to the chest if deciphered. “We are very happy,” said Dan Johnson, spokesman for Dinosaur National Monument.Ī decorated U.S. Now, many of those who’ve encountered imperiled or dead treasure seekers over the past decade have the same reaction to news that an unidentified person supposedly has found Forrest Fenn’s purported $2 million treasure at an undisclosed location. Anyone who finds and keeps property that has been lost or abandoned, such as a treasure trove, will also find it “taxable to you at its fair market value in the first year it’s your undisputed possession,” according to the I.R.S.Digital Replica Edition Home Page Close MenuĬHEYENNE - They’ve been pulled from steep canyons and rushing rivers, sometimes no longer breathing, after chasing a cryptic poem’s clues and promise of treasure deep into the Rocky Mountains. Fenn, the discovery may still come with some strings attached. Though the person who found the chest may remain anonymous, even to Mr. “I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries,” he said. Fenn commended all of the thrill seekers who had tried to find the chest over the years. “But for the vast majority, the opportunity was an adventure of a lifetime. “This belief did have some go against caution, either financially, physically or emotionally,” she added. Jenny Kile, who has tracked the hunt for years on her website, Mysterious Writings, said on Monday that the hunt had enticed thousands because “it was believed that no matter who you were, it could be done.” He added, “Two lives were lost and many others were put at risk as a result of this pursuit and we are glad it has come to an end.” Forrest Fenn’s alleged treasure has been found.” Officer Dusty Francisco, a spokesman for the New Mexico State Police, said that the department was “very pleased to learn that Mr. After spending a frigid night between two boulders, she was rescued the next day. In 2013, a Texas woman looking for the chest in New Mexico got lost near Bandelier National Monument, an expanse of 33,000 acres filled with canyons, steep trails and rugged woods. “We should teach people to swim.”Īnd there have been accounts of close calls and rescues. “If someone drowns in the swimming pool we shouldn’t drain the pool,” Mr. Fenn declined to retrieve the chest, however. “People are coming from other states and other parts of the world to find this elusive treasure that may or may not exist, with very few clues,” Chief Kassetas said at the time. Fenn to stop the hunt, saying that people were putting their lives on the line. In 2017, Chief Pete Kassetas of the New Mexico State Police urged Mr. Fenn of endangering people’s lives by offering up a quixotic adventure, or even a hoax. Fenn eventually specified that the valuables were not in an area that an octogenarian would find hard to reach.īut at least two people have died trying to follow his clues, and some have accused Mr. Seekers scrambled across high-elevation trails in Colorado, into the scrublands of New Mexico and toward landscapes carved by glaciers in Montana. Tens of thousands of people have searched for the chest, according to Mr. “Begin it where warm waters halt,” one clue reads, “and take it in the canyon down.” He has said that the treasure was hidden in the Rockies at 5,000 feet above sea level, hints that have sometimes led hunters into dangerous and remote stretches of wilderness. He announced the quest to the world in a self-published 2010 memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase,” and provided clues to the location in 24 cryptic verses of a poem. He had planned to have his remains interred with the riches, but when he recovered from the disease, he buried the box to give families a reason to “get off their couches,” he said in 2016. Fenn, a former Air Force fighter pilot who runs a gallery in Santa Fe, hatched the idea for the hunt decades ago, after he learned he had kidney cancer.
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