Buried treasure found in Rocky Mountains after 10-year quest

For a decade, the treasure chest filled with gold, rubies, emeralds and diamonds hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains lay unclaimed.

Tens of thousands of people searched for the riches. The quest led to lawsuits and even deaths.

But the man who hid the jewels and left clues for their discovery, 89-year-old Forrest Fenn, has announced that the chase is now over. The chest has been found. “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 on Sunday.

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

Fenn, an author and artefacts dealer who lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, had hidden the spoils, worth an estimated $1m (R16.79m).

He had included clues to the location in a 24-line poem published in his 2010 autobiography The Thrill of the Chase.

The treasure hunt had made headlines as the US struggled with the effects of recession and echoed the stories of frontiersmen who headed out West to seek their fortune.

An estimated 350,000 people from all over the world hunted for the treasure, and five died searching, according to US media reports, though the true scale of interest is hard to verify.

Fenn told newspaper New Mexican that the chest had been found “a few days ago” but did not say where.

He said: “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.