Forrest Fenn Treasure
The story
For a decade, a bronze chest hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains drew searchers into the wilderness in pursuit of a fortune. The treasure was the creation of Forrest Fenn, an art and antiquities dealer who hid a bronze chest of treasure at an undisclosed Rocky Mountains location around 2010. He launched the hunt publicly through his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, turning a personal cache into one of the most famous treasure hunts of the modern era.
The prize itself was as romantic as the chase. The chest was an antique bronze lockbox, roughly 10 by 10 by 5 inches and weighing about 22 pounds, filled with gold coins and nuggets, jewelry, gemstones, jade carvings, and pre-Columbian artifacts. Estimates of its overall worth vary and have never settled into a single authoritative figure — they are commonly cited somewhere between about $1 million and $5 million, sometimes summarized as roughly $2 million.
The search came to an end in 2020. On June 6, 2020, Jack Stuef, a Michigan medical student, found the chest. Fenn confirmed the find that same year, and Stuef publicly revealed his identity in December 2020 in an interview with Outside. The discovery closed a hunt that had run for roughly ten years.
Where the chest had rested, however, was only ever partly revealed. On July 22, 2020, Fenn stated on his Thrill of the Chase blog that, with the finder's authorization, the chest had been hidden in Wyoming — but the precise location was not disclosed, and neither Fenn nor Stuef ever made it public. The treasure did, in time, reappear in the open market: items from the chest were sold at a Heritage Auctions sale in December 2022, a sale that totaled about $1.3 million.
Fact vs. legend: The hidden chest, its contents, Jack Stuef's June 6, 2020 discovery, Fenn's disclosure that it had been hidden in Wyoming, and the roughly $1.3 million December 2022 Heritage Auctions sale are all documented facts. The chest's overall worth is the main point of uncertainty, with estimates ranging widely.
Search area: No public coordinates exist for this treasure — Fenn disclosed only that the chest had been hidden in Wyoming, and the exact site was never revealed by Fenn or the finder.