Jack Stuef Found Forrest Fenn's Treasure but Wanted Others to Share in the Joy

In 1988, an intriguing man with a whimsical name was sadly diagnosed with kidney cancer. Forrest Fenn was an art dealer who resided in Santa Fe at the time, which is a very mystical place indeed. His friend, author Douglas Preston, told the Intelligencer that Forrest was convinced he was going to die. He had good reason to hold onto this fear as Forrest's father took his own life after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Forrest decided to follow in his father's footsteps, but first, he wanted to have a little fun. After choosing the spot where he would die by suicide, Forrest decided to bury a treasure where he lay. He planned on leaving clues in a puzzle poem so that "anyone who found the grave would be welcome to rob it," said Douglas. Forrest recovered, but he decided to bury the treasure anyway. One decade and five deaths later, a man named Jack Stuef found it. Where is he now? Here's what we know.

In June 2020, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Forrest's buried treasure had been located. This was confirmed by Forrest, who still lived in Santa Fe. "The guy who found it does not want his name mentioned," said the 89-year-old former art dealer. The lucky guy sent Forrest a photo of the treasure as proof.

Four months later, the man who ended one of the greatest chases of all time gave an interview with Outside about what it was like to come out on top. His name is Jack Stuef, and at the time, he was a 32-year-old medical student who hailed from Michigan. He first heard about the treasure on Twitter in 2018. "I’ve probably thought about it for at least a couple hours a day, every day, since I learned about it," said Jack. "Every day."

The first thing he did was absorb every interview Forrest ever gave. Jack also bought Forrest's memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, which included a poem with clues pointing the reader to the treasure. Although he loved treating patients, Jack hated almost everything else about medicine and soon turned most of his attention to the search. "I think I got a little embarrassed by how obsessed I was with it," explained Jack. He kept this interest from friends and family.

On June 6, 2020, Jack found Forrest's treasure in Wyoming and immediately made the drive to Santa Fe in order to show the odd man responsible for this adventure. According to Jack, Forrest said the first thing they had to do was make other searchers aware of the fact that the treasure was found.

Two weeks after Forrest died in September 2020, Jack wrote a 3,000-word tribute to his new friend and published in on Medium. He didn't reveal his identity then but chose to do so in the Outside article due to the fact that he was facing a lawsuit that would thrust him into the public eye whether he wanted it or not. Two years later, he sold the treasure.

Jack first sold the contents of Forrest's treasure to Tesouro Sagrado Holdings, LLC, per Outside. Minus a few items, including the chest and a dragon bracelet, all 476 items were sold for $1,307,946 in December 2022 via an online auction. Heritage Auctions communications director Robert Wilonsky told the outlet that 1,643 people placed bids on the coveted items.

The highest came in at $55,200 for a 549-gram Alaskan gold nugget. In Forrest's memoir, he said the treasure also contained his autobiography in case the finder wanted to "know a little about the foolish person who abandoned such an opulent cache." The 20,000-word missive was housed in a wax-sealed glass jar and went for $48,000.

In November 2022, Jack once again took to Medium to explain why he decided to give up the goods. "After my identity was revealed almost two years ago, some fans of the treasure hunt reached out to tell me they hoped they could purchase an item from the treasure to commemorate their own adventures searching for it," he wrote. "I’m happy that today those people finally have the opportunity to do so."