The MAN Who Buried a TREASURE

Hopeful hunters are scouring the Rockies for a chest full of gold, jewels and artefacts reportedly worth millions. Where exactly is it? The clues lie in a mysterious poem

- Eric Spitznagel

“Please don’t say I buried it,” says the email from Forrest Fenn, the 89-year-old retired antiques dealer from New Mexico, USA, who engineered one of the biggest treasure hunts of the 21st century. “Just say I hid it.”

I read this line over and over, wondering what Fenn meant—and looking for a clue. He didn’t write, “I never buried the treasure.” He just doesn’t want me to tell anybody else he did. Which means ... what, exactly?

My mind races, and I briefly consider giving up on journalism to become a full-time treasure hunter. That is the power of Forrest Fenn’s treasure, a prize that in the past nine years has lured a surprisingly large and enthusiastic group of treasure hunters.

Fenn and his wife ran a high-end gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and amassed a personal collection that included [the famous Native-American chief ] Sitting Bull’s original peace pipe and a mummified falcon from King Tut’s tomb. In 1988, Fenn was diagnosed with kidney cancer. Faced with his own mortality, he came up with a crazy scheme: He would bury some of his favourite artefacts somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and then die next to them. “My desire was to hide the treasure and let my body stay there and go back to the soil,” he explains.

He beat the cancer and put the treasure idea on hold for two decades, until his 80th birthday, when he decided to finally go through with it (minus the dying in the wilderness part). Fenn filled an antique bronze lockbox measuring 10 inches by 10 inches with hundreds of treasures: gold coins and nuggets, rubies, diamonds, emeralds, Chinese jade carvings and pre-Columbian gold bracelets. The contents are worth somewhere between $1 million and $5 million, based on estimates Fenn has given over the years. Then he took his treasure chest out into the Rockies and hid it.