Who was Forrest Fenn, and who found his treasure? ...Middle East

Eccentric art dealer and author Forrest Fenn laid down a challenge in 2010 which sent tens of thousands of people on a quest to find hidden treasure.

Ten years later the chest of gold and jewels was finally found in the United States.

But along the way five people lost their lives and a number of others were arrested for trespass, digging in national parks and even burglary in their bid to find the hidden fortune worth at least $1m.

Now Netflix has made a three-part documentary series about the decade-long quest Gold & Greed: The Hunt for Fenn’s Treasure, which premieres on the streaming service on Thursday 27 March.

We take a look at the enigmatic man behind the treasure and where it is now.

Forrest Fenn was born on 22 August, 1930 and grew up in Temple, Texas with an older brother and a younger sister.

An adventurer at heart, he loved to fly-fish and spent family holidays in Yellowstone National Park as a child.

While at high school, he met his wife-to-be Peggy Proctor.

After school, he enrolled in the US air force and was sent to technical college in Biloxi, Mississippi to study radar mechanics before going on to train as a pilot.

He married Peggy in December 1953, after he had completed his training and she had finished her degree. The couple had two daughters Kelly and Zoe.

Fenn served in Europe and Asia as a pilot and rose to the rank of major during his career. He flew 328 combat missions during the Vietnam War, was shot down twice and was awarded a Silver Star, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star, sixteen Air Medals and a Purple Heart for his service.

After retiring from the air force, he decided to pursue an entirely different career entering the world of art and sculpture. He collected Native American artifacts and began forging bronze sculptures and trading them.

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Eventually, he founded the Arrowsmith-Fenn Gallery with business partner Rex Arrowsmith, which later became Fenn Galleries which he ran with his wife near their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

They made millions from the business but in 1988 he was diagnosed with lymphoma. This was to trigger a new phase in his life.

He beat cancer, sold the gallery and wrote a book entitled The Thrill of the Chase.

Within the self-published book were short stories about his life, his experiences, his memories and crucially a 24-line poem, which gave nine clues to the location of a treasure chest he had hidden in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe.

The location was, he said, a place he had initially chosen as his own resting place when he thought his cancer diagnosis was terminal.

Forrest Fenn’s book The Thrill of the Chase contained clues to a treasure (Photo: Netflix)

What was Fenn’s treasure?

Fenn had hidden the treasure in a bronze, square chest, lined with wood and with a locking front clasp.

The design on the chest featured knights scaling walls and maidens above throwing down flowers.

It weighed about 10kg and was 25cm by 25cm in size and 13cm deep.

Inside, he had placed gold nuggets, rare coins, jewellry, gemstones and precious relics said to be worth $1m.

For a decade, tens of thousands searched for the treasure chest across Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.

Some gave up their jobs, their families and even their lives in some cases in the hunt for the hidden fortune.

Five people are known to have lost their lives in their quest to locate the loot.

Randy Bilyeu went missing in January 2016, he had been searching the Rio Grande river north-west of Sante Fe. He had been away for 10 days before he was reported missing. A helicopter found his raft and his pet dog Leo, who had survived but Bilyeu’s body was not found until July the same year.

Jeff Murphy, from Batavia, Illinois, went searching for the treasure in Yellowstone National Park the following year. The 53-year-old was found dead on June 2017, after falling off a cliff. His wife told authorities he had been looking for the treasure when he was reported missing.

Paris Wallace, a pastor from Grand Junction Colorado, had told family he planned to search for the treasure. When he failed to show up to a family gathering on 14 June, 2017 he was reported missing. His car was found parked near Taos Junction Bridge and his body a few miles downstream of the Rio Grande.

Following Wallace’s death, the New Mexico State Police chief asked Forrest Fenn to call off the hunt. Fenn refused but urged searchers not to go anywhere an 80-year-old man could not go. 

Eric Ashby had moved from Tennessee to Colorado in 2016 to look for the treasure. The 31-year-old was last seen rafting on the Arkansas River on 28 June, 2017. The raft overturned and he went missing. His body was later found outside Cañon City, Colorado.

Michael Wayne Sexson, from Deer Trail, Colorado, went searching for the treasure near Dinosaur National Monument along the Utah-Colorado border. The 53-year-old had rented snowmobiles with his friend Steven Inlow in March 2020. The pair were found by rescuers on 21 March. Sexson had died from hypothermia, Inlow survived by drinking his own urine.

Finally in June 2020, the treasure was found. Fenn posted on the searcher blog Thrill of the Chase on 6 June, 2020 that the treasure had been located and retrieved.

Ten days later he posted photos on his blog site of him examining the contents of the chest and one of it apparently on or near the site where it was found

Journalist turned medical student Jack Stuef, from Michigan, had discovered the chest in Wyoming after beginning his hunt in 2018.

At first neither the identity of the finder nor anything about the location were revealed. But an impending lawsuit in relation to the treasure hunt forced him to reveal his identity in December.

In agreement with Fenn, the only detail he has ever revealed about the location of the hidden treasure is that it was in the state of Wyoming.

The quest for the treasure took hunters along rivers and into forests and national parks (Photo: Netflix)

What happened to Fenn’s treasure?

Fenn died in September 2020 at the age of 90, three months after the chest had been found.

The treasure was sold to a limited liability company named Tesouro Sagrado Holdings LLC on 19 September, 2022.

And the new owners put most of the items up for auction in November the same year, including: more than 476 pieces of gold (gold coins, gold dust and golden nuggets), a Sinu Indian necklace and other jewellery and Forrest Fenn’s Small Glass Jar “purportedly containing a 20,000-word autobiography”. 

The auction raised $1.26m in total from all the bids, the largest being $55,200 for a gold nugget which weighed of 549g.

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