Mystery solved: Treasure chest found after 10-year search

Antiquities dealer and author Forrest Fenn sits in his home in Santa Fe in this 2013 file photo. Photo / AP

A bronze chest filled with gold, jewels and other valuables worth more than US$1 million ($1.68m) and hidden a decade ago somewhere in America's Rocky Mountain wilderness has been found, according to a famed art and antiquities collector who created the treasure hunt.

Forrest Fenn, 89, told the Santa Fe New Mexican on Sunday that a man who did not want his name released — but was from "back East" — located the chest a few days ago and the discovery was confirmed by a photograph the man sent him.

"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 Sunday that still did not reveal the exact location. "I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot."

Fenn posted clues to the treasure's whereabouts online and in a 24-line poem that was published in his 2010 autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase.

Hundreds of thousands have hunted in vain across remote corners of the US West for the bronze chest believed to be filled with gold coins, jewellery and other valuable items. Many quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the search and others depleted their life savings. At least four people died searching for it.

Fenn, who lives in Santa Fe, said he packed and repacked his treasure chest for more than a decade, sprinkling in gold dust and adding hundreds of rare gold coins and gold nuggets.

Pre-Columbian animal figures went in, along with prehistoric "mirrors" of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewellery with rubies and emeralds.

He said he hid the treasure as a way to tempt people to get into the wilderness and give them a chance to launch an old-fashioned adventure and expedition for riches.

Fenn told The New Mexican in 2017 that the chest weighed 9kg and its contents weighed another 10kg. He said he delivered the chest to its hiding place by himself over two separate trips.

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.

"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.

- AP