Have you heard of the Fenn treasure?
This real-life treasure hunt has been going on for the past decade.
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In 1988, after receiving a cancer diagnosis and believing he was going to die, Forrest Fenn decided to leave one last legacy.
So in 2010, he took 40 lbs. of his acquired wealth in the form of artifacts, jewelry and other wares, put it in a treasure chest and buried it in the Rocky Mountains. He then released a poem that was to point to the location of the treasure. His ultimate goal? To inspire people to get outside and enjoy the great outdoors, just as he had his whole life.
And it worked. But, not without a few unintended consequences.
People became obsessed with finding the Fenn treasure, as it came to be known. So much so that over the course of the next decade, followers quit their jobs, spent their life savings and five people died in the search to find the treasure.
Then, in 2020, a man named Jack Stuef finally unearthed the treasure. After getting a relatively late start, Stuef joined the search in 2018 and after just two years of intense search, was the victor.
Meanwhile, Forrest Fenn was still alive. He beat his cancer diagnosis and lived another three decades. During that time, as he watched the frenzy of the search from afar, he and his family had been harassed, followed and stalked by various unhinged treasure hunters.
However, for Fenn, this behavior didn’t cast a shadow over all of the participants. In fact, he regularly kept in contact with several of the most enthusiastic treasure hunters through text and phone calls. He listened to their progress and concerns, but never gave a clue as to the location of the goods.
When Stuef located the treasure, he drove straight to Fenn’s house to prove his find. But Stuef didn’t want to release his name or the location of the treasure chest. After seeing how Fenn’s family had been harangued due to the treasure, he wanted to avoid the same fate. He also wanted to keep the final location a secret out of concern that the sight would become a tourist spot for fellow searchers, thus disparaging the beautiful and mostly untouched site that he now considered sacred.
The reluctant winner was eventually forced into the limelight as a lawsuit waged by a fellow treasure hunter claimed, among other allegations, that she helped Stuef solve a clue that led to him finding the goods and was the rightful victor.
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