Fenn treasure

The Fenn Treasure was a cache of gold and jewels that Forrest Fenn, an art dealer and author from Santa Fe, New Mexico, hid in the Rocky Mountains of the United States. It was found approximately a decade later in 2020 in Wyoming by an anonymous treasure hunter later revealed to be former journalist and medical student Jack Stuef. In attempting to honor what he perceives to be Fenn's wishes after his death in September 2020, he has refused to reveal the location of the treasure. An auction of items from the treasure chest in December 2022 resulted in $1.3 million in sales.
Forrest Fenn (August 22, 1930 – September 7, 2020) was a pilot in the United States Air Force, obtaining the rank of Major. He was awarded the Silver Star for his service in the Vietnam War where he flew 328 combat missions in 365 days. He retired from the Air Force and ran the Arrowsmith-Fenn Gallery with his partner Rex Arrowsmith, which became the Fenn Galleries which he operated with his wife, Peggy. The gallery was located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and sold a variety of Native American artifacts, paintings, bronze sculptures, and other art, including forged copies of works by Modigliani, Monet, Degas, and other artists. The gallery reportedly grossed $6 million a year.
In 1988, Fenn was diagnosed with cancer and given a prognosis that it was likely terminal. This inspired him to hide a treasure chest in an outdoor location with the purpose of creating a public search for it. He considered using the location as his final resting place as well. He recovered from the illness and in 2010 self-published The Thrill of the Chase: A Memoir, a collection of short stories from his life. He described a treasure chest that he said contained gold nuggets, rare coins, jewelry, and gemstones. He went on to write that he hid the chest "in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe". Fenn said that the stories in the book included hints to the chest's location and that the poem found in the chapter "Gold and More" contained nine clues that would lead a searcher to the chest. Fenn's book and story prompted a treasure hunt in the Rocky Mountains of New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The value of the chest was estimated to be as high as $2 million, depending on the appraisal of the items. In December 2022, after the treasure had been found, an auction of items from the treasure chest resulted in $1.3 million in sales. Fenn claimed to make no money on the sale of the self-published books out of concern for being labeled a fraud by critics.
Before the treasure hunt, Fenn came into conflict with authorities over federal antiquities law during Operation Cerberus Action. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided his home in 2009 as part of an investigation into artifact looting in the Four Corners area. Items in his possession reportedly included pieces of chain mail from the Pecos National Historical Park, human hair, a feathered talisman, and a bison skull, some of which were confiscated by federal authorities; no charges were filed. Two people targeted in the case died by suicide, and Fenn blamed the FBI for their deaths.
Fenn died a few months after his treasure was found, on September 7, 2020, at the age of 90.
Five people died while searching for the treasure. This led the chief of the New Mexico State Police, Pete Kassetas, to publicly implore Fenn to end the treasure hunt, stating "He's putting lives at risk."
A number of notable controversies surrounded the treasure hunt. Several searchers were cited or arrested for committing legal infractions in the course of their pursuits.
The treasure chest features a bronze construction with a wood liner and locking front clasp. According to Fenn, it weighs about 22 pounds (10.0 kg) and its dimensions are 10 by 10 by 5 inches (250 mm × 250 mm × 130 mm). The chest features scenes and reliefs with knights scaling walls on ladders and maidens above throwing flowers down upon them. This style of work appears to be references to the Le Roman de la Rose poem about the pursuit of love and scaling the "Castle of Love" which gained popularity around the same time the chest was made. Because of the popularity of the treasure hunt, artists have made modern recreations based on Fenn's chest.
On June 6, 2020, Fenn posted on the searcher blog Thrill of the Chase that the treasure had been found:
This was subsequently confirmed by Fenn, who further disclosed in a news article that the finder was a male from the eastern United States who had sent him a photograph. The identity of the finder, the photograph, and the location of the treasure were not revealed. On June 16, Fenn released additional photos on the Thrill of the Chase blog site including of himself examining the contents of the chest and one of it sitting in weathered condition implicitly on or near the site where it was found. On July 22 Fenn stated on the Thrill of the Chase blog site that the treasure's finder had authorized him to disclose, in the interest of closure for many of its searchers, that it had been hidden in Wyoming.
In December 2020, Jack Stuef, a medical student from Michigan, revealed that he found Fenn's treasure chest and decided to disclose his identity by going public in an interview with Outside. Due to safety reasons he preferred to stay anonymous but a lawsuit was expected to reveal his identity.
Stuef revealed that two small items indicated in pre-find publicity were not present in the chest, a small gold frog on a necklace and a Spanish emerald ring found at San Lazaro. When Stuef notified Forrest about the missing items, Forrest located the frog within his collection and presented it to Stuef. However, Forrest was not able to find the missing emerald ring.
In July 2021, a French treasure hunter named Bruno Raphoz filed a $10 million lawsuit against Fenn's estate in the United States District Court for the District of New Mexico. According to the complaint, Raphoz had determined that the treasure was hidden in southwestern Colorado, informed Fenn of his solution, and began making preparations to retrieve it. However, his plans were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Fenn announced soon afterward that the treasure had been found in Wyoming. Raphoz contended that Fenn took advantage of the delay to move the chest from Colorado to Wyoming, noting that its exact final location has not been specified by Stuef or any of Fenn's relatives. The suit was dismissed on July 16, 2021; Raphoz subsequently filed an amended complaint in an attempt to reopen it, but was denied on August 5.
In his 2010 book, Fenn published a poem which read, in part:
In 2013, journalist Tony Dokoupil speculated that the treasure lay within Yellowstone National Park after reading Fenn's unpublished autobiography, which mentions "Nine Mile Hole" as Fenn's "top secret" fishing spot in the park. In a July 2019 blog post titled "River Bathing is Best", Fenn described his childhood 'secret bathing spot' in Yellowstone National Park where a geyser feeds into the Firehole River. Wrote Fenn: "I could change the water temperature around my body just by moving a foot or so."
In the 2025 Netflix docuseries Gold & Greed, searcher Justin Posey visited the site where the chest had been found and shared his interpretation of the poem. Posey identified Madison Junction, where the Firehole and Gibbon River meet to form the Madison River, as the place where "warm waters halt". According to Posey, a car trip through Madison Canyon leads to Nine Mile Hole, a fishing spot known for its brown trout ("Home of Brown"). Friend Cynthia Meachum confirms this interpretation, reporting Fenn had shared that "Mr. Brown" was the family nickname for a large, elusive trout that could be hooked but not caught; Meachum reports her response was "You have to be effing kidding me, that's the dumbest thing I ever heard". Posey argued that "the blaze" was a tree that had since fallen down.
The Fenn treasure hunt has been featured in television shows, magazine articles, and books.