True Story: Treasure Chest Hidden in Rocky Mountains Found After 10 Year Search

In a plot straight out of a movie, a bronze chest filled with gold, jewels, and other valuables was found after an extensive 10-year treasure hunt.

The contents of the chest are worth more than $1 million and were hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. Forrest Fenn, 89, a famed art and antiquities collector who created the treasure hunt revealed the find to the Santa Fe New Mexican on Sunday.

“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Fenn said in a statement on his website.

“I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.”

Who Found The Bounty?

Apparently, a man who wants to remain anonymous but was described as from “back East.” The discovery was confirmed by a photograph the man sent Fenn a few days before Sunday.

Clues to the treasure’s whereabouts were posted online and in a poem that was published in his 2010 autobiography “The Thrill of the Chase.”

“I congratulate the thousands of people who participated in the search and hope they will continue to be drawn by the promise of other discoveries,” he said on his website.

For a decade, hundreds of thousands of people have searched unsuccessfully across remote corners of the U.S. West for the bronze chest.

In fact, some quit their jobs or even depleted their life savings to dedicate themselves to the search. At least four people died searching for it.

Fenn said he packed and repacked his treasure chest for more than a decade, sprinkling in gold dust. He added hundreds of rare gold coins, gold nuggets, pre-Columbian animal figures, prehistoric “mirrors” of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade, and antique jewelry with rubies and emeralds.

Reportedly, the chest weighs 20 pounds (9 kilograms). Its contents weigh another 22 pounds (10 kilograms). He said he delivered the chest to its hiding place by himself over two separate trips.

Why did he do this?

Fenn hid the treasure as a way to tempt people to get into the wilderness for an adventure and expedition for riches.

Asked how he felt now that the treasure has been found, Fenn said: “I don’t know, I feel halfway kind of glad, halfway kind of sad because the chase is over.”

One thing is for certain, anyone who can finance a million dollar treasure hunt for fun is low key big balling.