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The full story of Forrest Fenn's mysterious treasure hunt
Thousands searched for it, only one allegedly succeeded.
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Updated: 8:34 AM CST Dec 9, 2020
The full story of Forrest Fenn's mysterious treasure hunt
Thousands searched for it, only one allegedly succeeded.
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Updated: 8:34 AM CST Dec 9, 2020
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a treasure chest worth millions hidden in the Rocky Mountains with only a few vague clues from a poem to discover its whereabouts. Thousands have attempted to find it, and some even died in their pursuit. This is the story of Forrest Fenn's treasure, beginning 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. I think a lot of people were just attracted to that aspect of, like having a purpose, right? You know, your purpose is to try to find fence treasure, but also they found fun and a great love for adventure and the outdoors along the way. Shelby Cashman and anchor at local news station K O. A. T in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has tracked the treasure hunt over the years. So who exactly is Forrest Fenn here in New Mexico? Horsemen at this art gallery. And he was a prolific art and artifact collector. He was very well known in our area, and he is also extremely rich. He has developed his fortune over decades and decades, and also kind of, ah, self proclaimed eccentric. He's a Vietnam War vet He was actually a fighter pilot, and he's been an outdoorsman, though his whole life. By the age of 14 he apparently was leading fishing expeditions and Yellowstone. He was a license cougar Unter. So his whole life has been in the outdoor. He initially actually filled this chest after he was diagnosed with cancer back in 1988 his initial plan was he was going to drag it into the mountains and he was going to die beside his treasure. Well, turns out he survived. So he's like, Okay, well, I'm gonna live. So let's let other people find my treasure in 2010 4 is buried a £40 treasure chest that was supposedly filled with incredible riches and artifacts. The chest is full of emeralds and diamonds and Rubies and sapphires, so he's actually never confirmed how much officially the chest and in the content is worth. It's estimated about $2 million at least in 2011. He released his memoir titled The Thrill of the Chase, and it is a poem with nine clues. But what it actually is is literally a map guiding people Teoh, a secret treasure that was buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. And so the thrill of the chase is the book that he then released to the public, basically saying, I buried some of my fortune somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Go have fun and find it, he said. This is for every redneck out there with a pickup truck. Six kids who just lost his job, his wife and lacks adventure. I wanted to get the kids out of the game room and away from their little texting machines and out in the the sunshine and the mountains and the trees. You know, we're not doing that anymore. Much like the clues in the poem, Force remained elusive about where the treasure could be. Not even his wife of nearly 70 years knew where it was buried. Who knows where the treasure is on Li Mei? And when they're sitting there with the treasure chest on their lap and they raised that lid, it's gonna be something amazing to them. They may faint. It's such a beautiful sight. The treasure hunt garnered international attention through social media potential treasure hunters connected and theorized about it's whereabouts. The Rocky Mountains started to Seymour tourists in pursuit of the treasure, especially in New Mexico, where Forest lived. In most recent interviews, he said, as many as 350,000 people have gone to hunt for this treasure. He wrote this book, and then it was like a word of mouth thing, just like exploded. I don't even know if he expected it to get as big as he did. There have been people close. There have been people who have figured out the first two clues in my poem, but they didn't get the 3rd, 4th and 5th and they went right past the treasure chest on. I'm not gonna tell them who they are because they'll go crazy. This area covers New Mexico, Colorado, all the way up into Wyoming. You go from desert all the way up to the Colorado Rocky Mountains, which is snow covered cold. And there's water. There's the Rio Grande going through all this, the riptides. There's the water element of it. There's also just the vastness of it. There's not a lot of markers along the way. There's nothing really to identify where you are in the Rocky mountains and forests, then didn't do anyone any favors like he literally just said somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Evan. As the searches popularity rose, so did the controversy surrounding its creator. It's always kind of shrouded in mystery about how he really like a massive, huge fortune, and that's the way he likes it. He likes us all to be left questioning. How did he get the Rubies? How did he get the emeralds? How did he get all these artifacts? So it turns out like he spent decades himself just going out on often controversial missions. So at one point, he was so rich he actually bought a site of Indian Pueblo land and he went in and he excavated this ancient Pueblo Indian site. And so that's just an example of how he found some of his artifacts. It was very controversial. A lot of the native people called him like a plunderer and that he was coming into their land and destroying it and taking what was theirs and taking all this ancient stuff. And he basically said, I don't care. I bought this land and I'm gonna do it. That's the kind of guy he waas I would love if somebody found it tomorrow. But if nobody found it for 100 years. That's okay with me to when people first heard about the thrill of the chase, they wanted to go out and try and get outdoors and figure it out. And then, as the years went on, it became very controversial because people were not only getting injured because they were just traipsing all around the Rocky Mountains. They were going out there sometimes by themselves for weeks at a time, and family members didn't know where they were. Sometimes treasure hunters never made it home. At least five people died in the pursuit in the Rocky Mountains. The five people who died searching for Forrest Fenn's treasure, where Randy Bilyeu, Jeff Murphy, pastor Paris Wallace, Eric Ashby and Michael Wayne Sexton. Randy Bilyeu was the first to go missing on January 20th 2016. His body wasn't found until six months later. Well, I think it's very regretful, terrible. Any time a person goes into the forest where these a deer hunter or fisherman or anyone else you tell you take a chance. Randy's ex wife, Linda, spoke out against the treasure hunt and cautioned others in pursuit of the treasure. What's your message for them. Godspeed actually made sure the treasure exists before you go searching for him. Do you believe it exists? I do not treasure Israel. The treasure story. Israel, Randy's ex wife was not the only person against the hunt. In June 2017 Colorado Pastor Paris Wallace also went missing after his body was found. The New Mexico chief of police at the time, Pete Cassette, is implored for us to end the search. I want Mr Finn to retrieve the treasure or call off the hunt. After he retrieved the treasure, he actually contemplated calling off the search or a little bit. And then he actually reversed course and said, I'm going to continue on. And the reason why was because, he said, after a long deliberation and discussions with friends, I have decided that stopping the search would not be fair to the thousands who have searched the Rockies and gone home with wonderful memories that will last them forever. A number of family members who have been estranged for years have reunited to join the search. We like to say to people it's not in that really tough terrain. It's in a place where an eight year old man could get it safely. Despite for US insistence that the treasure wasn't in a dangerous place and the police chiefs plea to call off the hunt, at least three more treasure hunters died. Eric Ashby was a man who had been living in Colorado Springs, and he went Thio Hunt for the treasure, and he was on the Arkansas River on a raft when it flipped in June of 2017. Jeff Murphy died after a 500 ft fall in Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't confirmed until 2018 that Jeff had been searching for Forest Treasure when he fell on March 17 2020. Michael Wayne, sex in in an unknown travel partner, set out to find the treasure in Dinosaur National Monument, which sits along the Utah Colorado border. The pair was reported missing, and Michael was later found dead. His partner was treated in the hospital and later released. I think two people who hear about it, maybe they're lacking a little bit of hope or they're looking for something different, you know, they hear the story, they cling to it, thinking this is a new adventure and like if I find some treasure along the way that cool and they kind of get obsessed with it, and they want to be the one to find it. At least five deaths and multiple rescue missions related to the hunt costing millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of manpower caused a division in New Mexico on the local opinion of Forrest Fenn. He's sort of like this mythical creature guy. He's this person that people like tell their kids about, and so he's got this kind of focal or esque vibe about him. They kind of put him on a pedestal almost because they just get so wrapped up into his story and the tradition of it. So there's the team that says Forrest Fenn did nothing wrong because he put the treasure there. He wrote the poem and he told people basically go at your own risk. Then the other camp basically says, Hey, these five people are on your hands because you were the one that inspired them to do this. As the search continued, so did the controversies. There were those who falsely claimed to have found the treasure. They can't produce the photograph. They can't describe the contents of the chest. So, you know, I know that they're bluffing. There were lawsuits, including one in which a treasure hunter accused Forest of fraudulent statements about the treasure. The lawsuit was later dropped. Nobody is going toe accidentally stumble on that treasure chest. They're going to have to figure out the clues and let the clues take them to that spot. Even forests owned family became targets. A man named Francisco Chavez admitted to stalking Forest granddaughter because, he said he was convinced she was the treasure. Apparently, he found out where, um, Horse Sense daughter lived and term, you know, granddaughter. He would send packages divorce fan with weird riddles about why he believed his granddaughter was the treasure. At one point, Forrest Fenn wrote to the judge, and the attorneys, saying, We all fear for our lives were wondering if we should get guns. He was arrested on charges of stalking in June 2020. Forest made an announcement on his blogged. The treasure had finally been found. Well, actually, I was a little bit shocked because they hid it in a pretty good place and lots of people over the years couldn't find it. But this man followed the clues in my poem and they took him right to the treasure, and that was what it was all about. At First Force wouldn't give many details, but the hunter, who remains anonymous, eventually revealed the treasures general location in classic Forrest Fenn fashion. He has been releasing very few details about where it was founded, who founded all. He has said that a man from back East was the one who found the treasure. It was found in Wyoming. People were shocked because I think a lot of the searches had been concentrated here in New Mexico. In Colorado, Fen said that he knew it was true because the person emailed him photos and told him exactly where he found it, and Finn has said he will never reveal who they were, so it's going to be on the onus of the person who found the treasure to come out and say themselves that they found it. Although the hunt for this treasure is over, MAWR conspiracy theories have Onley blossom since its discovery. Some people are saying Forrest Fenn is testing us. There were pictures of forests holding the treasure and so people are like the pictures could have been any treasure that he had. Some people say Well on Lee, The true treasure hunters know that this is a test by Forest fan and it is still out there. Some people are saying the controversy finally caught up with him and that he decided to stop the search. Others question if the search was ever really at all. I think most people thought when it was a hoax and two, if it was ever found, it will be found like hundreds of years from now. This thing was gonna be buried forever. We would never know the truth. We would never know if it was a hope. Everything really? Because no one was ever gonna be able to find it. Someone finds it all of a sudden 10 years later. And I think people were like, Wait, what? It was really this whole time. One thing is for certain, Forrest Fenn's legacy will live on. Generally speaking, it's been a good thing. A lot of people have really enjoyed the mountains and naked emails from them, and they say they're going to keep coming back. That was one of my motives in hiding the treasury, but it has now been found, so the search is over. One thing about the state of New Mexico is they love their tradition. And so Forrest Fenn lives in our community. He's part of our community, and we are so lucky that he's part of our New Mexico culture, so we're going to celebrate him. But I do think there's a part that is a little sad that this chapter has kind of come to an end. After our initial interview with Shelby, Forrest Fenn passed away on September 7th, 2020. Police say he died in his home of natural causes. He was 90 years old. Forest fence death adds a little bit to the mystical kind of nature of the whole thing. And I think, um, you know, when they tell the legend of Forrest Fenn, they'll talk about the timing to He died two months after seeing his life's work come to fruition. Yes, it was dangerous. No one is discounting the people who died in the search of the people who got injured. But I think it's also important to note that Ben's mission was to get people outside to bond with your family and friends toe have something exciting to look forward to, and I think he accomplished that. What do you think was forced Fenn's treasure hunt? A hoax? Did he accomplish his mission of getting more people to explore the outdoors? I'm Edinburgh, and thanks for watching. Yeah.

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