When art and antiquities dealer Forrest Fenn revealed he had hidden a box of gold, jewels and other precious artifacts somewhere in the wilderness of the American West, he set off a decade-long treasure hunt that drew hundreds of thousands of seekers from around the world.
People scaled mountains, rafted down rivers and trekked through forests in the hopes of discovering Fenn’s secret box of riches, which was said to be worth up to $2 million. The legions of devoted treasure hunters were armed only with clues from a cryptic poem penned by Fenn, as well as other hints he scattered throughout his memoir and press interviews.
Now, five years after the treasure was found, the mania around the quest is the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, “Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure.”
“It’s the largest, biggest modern day treasure hunt of our time,” director Jared McGilliard said in an interview Thursday with NBC News’ Joe Fryer. “It harkens back to Indiana Jones … it just felt like a dream story to tell.”
The three-part series explores Forrest Fenn’s motivations for hiding the treasure, and tells the stories of multiple people from all walks of life who sought the treasure for years.
For many seekers, the quest for the treasure was rewarding in itself, McGilliard says.
“It can be a little overused trope, but the journey is the adventure,” he said. “It got people outside. It changed their perspective on themselves and their own life and what they can accomplish … People began to dream again, about how their life could change and on this amazing adventure.”
The series also explores the treasure hunt’s dark side, notably the fact that five people lost their lives in their search for Fenn’s cache of riches.
And, without sharing any spoilers, the docuseries also includes one bombshell twist that suggests the hunt may not be over yet.
Keep reading to learn more about the true story behind “Gold & Greed,” including who Forrest Fenn was, what his mysterious poem said, and how the treasure was found.
Who was Forrest Fenn and what was his treasure?
Forrest Fenn was an art and antiquities dealer and Vietnam War veteran based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. His star-studded client list included Ralph Lauren, Robert Redford and Suzanne Somers, TODAY reported in 2013.
In 1988, Fenn, who was born in 1930, learned he had kidney cancer and was told he had a 20% chance of surviving three more years.
Facing this diagnosis, he pondered how he would be remembered and what he wished to leave behind. Eventually, when thoughts about his mortality “hit bottom,” Fenn was struck by an idea.
“It had been so much fun building my collection over the decades, why not let others come searching for some of it while I’m still here, and maybe continue looking for it after I’m gone?” he wrote in his 2010 memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase.”
“So I decided to fill a treasure chest with gold and jewels, then secret it — leaving clues on how to find it for any searcher willing to try,” he continued.
Fenn began filling an antique lock box with a heap of treasures he had accumulated over the years, including gold nuggets, two of which weighed more than a pound, and many other smaller gold pieces and coins, he revealed in his memoir.
The box’s treasures also included ancient Chinese carved jade figures, a Spanish 17th-century gold ring, and an antique gold bracelet set with 254 rubies, six emeralds, two Ceylon sapphires and several small diamonds.
All told, the box contained about 20 troy pounds of gold and was estimated to be worth up to $2 million.
Fenn spent years building the treasure box, and eventually hid it in the Rocky Mountains in around 2010, TODAY reported in 2013.
As suggested by the title of his memoir, Fenn hid the box not only to enrich whoever found it, but to inspire treasure hunters to find intangible rewards in the search itself.
“Get your kids out in the countryside, take them fishing and get them away from their little hand-held machines,” he told TODAY.
In his memoir, he provided some clues as to the location of the treasure, noting it was “in the mountains somewhere north of Santa Fe.” He also said he hid the chest “so it would be difficult to find but not impossible.”
Fenn also wrote a poem, included in his memoir, that he said contained nine clues about the location of the treasure. He noted that some subtle hints about the hidden loot were also scattered throughout his book.
In addition to these clues, he appeared multiple times on TODAY in 2013 to reveal more hints about the location of the treasure. He shared that the treasure was not hidden in Idaho or Utah, nor was it hidden in a graveyard, hidden higher than 5,000 feet above sea level, or “associated with any structure.”
As interest grew in his hidden bounty, Fenn became an almost cult-like figure to thousands of fortune seekers, who combed through his writings and even used software to analyze his facial expressions in TV interviews to glean hints about the box’s whereabouts, according to the documentary.
Following his 1988 diagnosis, Fenn recovered from cancer. He died in Santa Fe of natural causes at 90 in 2020, the Associated Press reported. He was survived by his wife, Peggy, who died later that year, their two daughters, and multiple grandchildren.
What did Forest Fenn’s poem say?
Fenn included a poem in his memoir that contained nine clues, which “if followed precisely” would lead to the location of his hidden treasure.
“The clues are in consecutive order. If you want to find the treasure chest, you have my book,” he told Lorena Mills in an interview on Report from Santa Fe in 2011.
He said treasure seekers should begin by reading the book “just normally,” and then go back and “read the poem six, eight, 10 times, study every line, every word.”
Then, he recommended, “read the book again slowly with the idea of looking for clues or hints that are in the book that will help you follow the clues (in the poem). You can find the chest with just the clues, but there are hints in the book that will help you with the clues.”
The poem reads as follows:
As I have gone alone in there
And with my treasures bold,
I can keep my secret where,
And hint of riches new and old.
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.
From there it’s no place for the meek,
The end is drawing ever nigh;
There’ll be no paddle up your creek,
Just heavy loads and water high.
If you’ve been wise and found the blaze,
Look quickly down, your quest to cease,
But tarry scant with marvel gaze,
Just take the chest and go in peace.
So why is it that I must go
And leave my trove for all to seek?
The answer I already know
I’ve done it tired, and now I’m weak.
So hear me all and listen good,
Your effort will be worth the cold.
If you are brave and in the wood
I give you title to the gold.
From “The Thrill of The Chase” By forrest Fenn
What happened during the hunt?
Hundreds of thousands of treasure hunters around the world searched for Fenn’s hidden box of riches, with some die-hard seekers devoting years of their lives to the quest.
Fenn communicated regularly with fans, and once estimated he had received 13,000 emails and 18 marriage proposals from treasure seekers, according to journalist Ben Wallace, who wrote an in-depth feature about the quest for New York Magazine in 2020, and was interviewed in the documentary.
The search “gave them meaning in their lives and it led people to give up everything in pursuit of the treasure,” Wallace said in the documentary. “People were going through their savings to fund their searches, relationships ending, some people going to prison.”
A psychologist at the University of North Dakota even conducted a study on the Fenn treasure hunters in 2020 and found that 10% of seekers who blogged about their quests “described their involvement as a possible addiction.”
“Gold & Greed” follows the stories of several devoted treasure hunters, including Cynthia Meacham, a retiree who trekked around the Rockies for years in search of the riches and developed a close personal relationship with Fenn.
The documentary also chronicles the quest of Chris Hurst, a father who spent years hunting for the treasure in the Wyoming wilderness with his two sons in the hopes of giving his wife an easier retirement. The Hursts sold many of their assets and downsized their home to help fund their quest, Wyoming’s Powell Tribune reported in 2020.
For Justin Posey, another treasure seeker featured in the documentary, the hunt was “less about the gold.”
“It was about solving this puzzle that combined poetry and history and wilderness exploration,” he told Joe Fryer on NBC News. “It was just about deciphering the clues. And it almost became like a meditative experience.”
While Posey didn’t find the treasure, he became linked to Fenn’s legacy in another surprising way, as revealed in a major twist at the end of the docuseries.
While Fenn’s hidden treasure inspired wonder and an Indiana Jones-like sense of adventure in many searchers, the chase also had a dark side.
At least five people died while seeking the treasure, including Randy Bilyeu, whose body was found near the Rio Grande river months after he went missing while searching for the loot in 2016, according to The Guardian. Another searcher, Paris Wallace, was also found dead along the Rio Grande the following year.
Treasure hunter Jeff Murphy died after falling 500 feet in Yellowstone National Park in 2017, and searcher Eric Ashby drowned while rafting the Arkansas River in Colorado.
A fifth treasure seeker, Michael Wayne Sexson, also died in 2017 after trekking into Dinosaur National Monument along the Utah-Colorado border without adequate clothing or food, according to the Denver Post.
As the potential dangers of the quest became more apparent, Pete Kassetas, the former New Mexico State Police Chief, publicly implored Fenn to call off the search.
“I did not know how to stop this. I wanted to quit sending in people to save the searchers,” Kassetas said in the documentary.
In 2017, Fenn said in a statement that he would not encourage people to stop seeking the treasure.
“I have given a lot of thought about ending the search, but I am not sure what that would accomplish,” the statement read, as shown in the documentary.
Who found Forrest Fenn’s treasure?
The search for Fenn’s treasure ended a decade after it began when it was confirmed that Jack Stuef, a then-32-year-old medical student, had found the antique box in Wyoming on June 6, 2020.
“This treasure hunt was the most frustrating experience of my life,” Stuef wrote in a Medium essay that year. “There were a few times when I, exhausted, covered in scratches and bites and sweat and pine pitch, and nearing the end of my day’s water supply, sat down on a downed tree and just cried alone in the woods in sheer frustration.”
He did not disclose the exact location of the treasure, although other seekers later used photos to zoom in on the exact place the box had likely been discovered, as shown in the documentary.
Stuef, who described himself as a “millennial with student loans to pay off,” sold the majority of Fenn’s treasure at auction in 2022.
The final auction brought in about $1.3 million and included more than 400 items, including gold coins and nuggets, gold dust, and precious jewelry, as well as a glass jar holding a scroll apparently printed with a 20,000-word autobiography of Fenn, according to Heritage Auctions.
Stuef said he had initially hoped to maintain his anonymity, and said Fenn had been fully supportive of protecting his identity.
“Not because I have anything to hide, but because Forrest and his family endured stalkers, death threats, home invasions, frivolous lawsuits, and a potential kidnapping — all at the hands of people with delusions related to his treasure,” Stuef wrote in a later Medium essay. “I don’t want those things to happen to me and my family.”
However, Stuef ended up revealing his identity in December 2020 after he learned about what he described as a “meritless lawsuit” was going to be brought against him by a woman he didn’t know.
“This would make my name a matter of public record, so I chose to come forward today,” he wrote on Medium.
He called the lawsuit an “abuse of the court system” and maintained he was “the legitimate finder of the treasure.”
Stuef says he was “thankful” to meet Fenn once before he died, and honored the collector and author’s legacy in an essay after he died in 2020.
“Of course, Forrest’s greatest gift to humanity was his treasure,” Stuef wrote. “Sure, it could only be given to one person, the one who found it, but it inspired hope the world over and the joy of discovery for all those who got to go out and appreciate the wonders of the Rockies.”