After 10 years, a chase for a hidden treasure in the Rocky Mountains has come to an end.
Forrest Fenn, who created the
treasure hunt, announced over the weekend that someone who did not want to be
named had found the bronze chest filled with gold nuggets, coins,
sapphires, diamonds, pre-Columbian artifacts and other items worth $2 million.
The chest discovery was confirmed
through a photograph the man sent him.
“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,” Mr Fenn said on his website this weekend.
Mr. Fenn will turn 90 in August.
He is a millionaire, a former Vietnam fighter pilot, a self-taught archaeologist
and a successful art dealer in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He had the idea for the
hunt decades ago, after he learned he had kidney cancer. When he recovered from
the disease, he buried the box to give families a reason to “get off their
couches”.
In a self-published 2010
memoir, “The
Thrill of the Chase,” he provided
clues to the location in 24 cryptic verses of a poem. He announced that the
treasure was hidden in the Rocky Mountains, somewhere between Santa Fe and the
Canadian border at 1,500 meters above sea level.
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
Mr. Fenn specified. "The treasure is not hidden in a dangerous place. I hid it in 2010 when I was about 80 years old."
But at least two people have died
trying to follow his clues, and some have accused Mr. Fenn of endangering
people’s lives by offering up
a quixotic adventure, or even a hoax.
In 2017, Chief Pete Kassetas of
the New Mexico State Police urged
Mr. Fenn to stop the hunt, saying that people
were putting their lives at risk. “People are coming from other states and
other parts of the world to find this treasure that may or may not exist, with
very few clues. They’re underestimating New Mexico geography ”, Chief Kassetas said at
the time.
However, Mr. Fenn disagreed and
he told The New York Times that year “If someone
drowns in the swimming pool we shouldn’t drain the pool. We should teach people
to swim.”
Officer Dusty Francisco, a
spokesman for the New Mexico State Police, said that the department was “very
pleased to learn that Mr. Forrest Fenn’s alleged treasure has been found. 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.”
Though the person who found the
chest may remain anonymous, the discovery may still come with
some strings attached. Anyone who finds and keeps lost or abandoned property will
also find it “taxable at its fair market value in the first year of its undisputed
possession,” according
to the I.R.S.
From The New York Times (edited)
Photo credit Nite Cote
