Forrest Fenn Was Like a Real-Life Pirate, Except He Wanted People to Find His Buried Treasure
"The moment it happened was not the triumphant Hollywood ending some surely envisioned."
Published March 27 2025, 9:39 a.m. ET
Clearly, the movies are to blame for all of our romanticized ideas about treasure hunting. Who among us hasn't dreamt of a day when a trip up to their parents' attic ended in a search for a missing pirate ship and enough gold to save an entire community? The Goonies really had us all believing that we could do anything with the right friends and at least one person who can kind of play the piano.
From Indiana Jones to Benjamin Gates, right on down to Dora the Explorer, Hollywood has done an incredible job of making treasure hunters look cool. Beyond the thrill of finding something that's lost or hidden lies the almost universal desire to get rich quick. In the movies, sometimes the quick part comes with a caveat like death. In the real world, a secret fortune is harder to come by. Unless you're Forrest Fenn. He buried a treasure and left clues. Did anyone ever find it?
Was Forrest Fenn's treasure ever found?
In June 2020, The Santa Fe New Mexican reported that Forrest's buried treasure had been located. This was confirmed by Forrest, who 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.
Forrest Fenn died in 2020.
On Sept. 7, 2020, Forrest died at the age of 90 in his home in Santa Fe, per The New York Times. Two weeks later, Jack wrote a piece titled "A Remembrance of Forrest Fenn" and posted it anonymously to Medium. The byline simply read "The Finder." It was a 3,000-word essay that was really an ode to Forrest as well as a description of what it was like to find his treasure.
"The moment it happened was not the triumphant Hollywood ending some surely envisioned; it just felt like I had just survived something and was fortunate to come out the other end," said Jack. He eventually shared his identity with the journalist working on the Outside piece because a lawsuit filed against him would do that anyway. Despite knowing Forrest for a short time, Jack had a great deal of respect for him, which meant keeping the location of the buried treasure a secret. That was Forrest's sacred place.