What do you do when you are an eccentric millionaire diagnosed with terminal cancer? If you're Forrest Fenn, you hide a literal treasure chest in the wild and start a real-life, deadly treasure hunt. In 2010, this 80-year-old art dealer packed a 40-pound bronze chest with around 2 million dollars worth of gold nuggets, rare coins, rubies, and ancient artifacts. He hiked alone into the Rocky Mountains and hid it. To help people find it, he published a memoir containing a cryptic, 24-line poem. Fenn claimed the poem contained nine specific clues, and anyone smart enough to decode them would walk away a millionaire. Absolute chaos followed. Over the next decade, an estimated 350,000 people went looking for the chest. People quit their jobs, drained their life savings, and destroyed their marriages in pursuit of the gold. Tragically, at least five people actually died in the unforgiving wilderness trying to solve Fenn's riddle. It became so dangerous that state police literally begged Fenn to call the hunt off. He completely refused. Finally, in June 2020, a 32-year-old medical student named Jack Stuef successfully decoded the poem and found the chest hidden in the Wyoming wilderness. Just two months later, Forrest Fenn passed away at the age of 90. He lived exactly long enough to see his wild, decade-long game finally beaten.

What do you do when you are an eccentric millionaire diagnosed with terminal cancer? If you're Forrest Fenn, you hide a literal treasure chest in the wild and start a real-life, deadly treasure hunt. In 2010, this 80-year-old art dealer packed a 40-pound bronze chest with around 2 million dollars worth of gold nuggets, rare coins, rubies, and ancient artifacts. He hiked alone into the Rocky Mountains and hid it. To help people find it, he published a memoir containing a cryptic, 24-line poem. Fenn claimed the poem contained nine specific clues, and anyone smart enough to decode them would walk away a millionaire. Absolute chaos followed. Over the next decade, an estimated 350,000 people went looking for the chest. People quit their jobs, drained their life savings, and destroyed their marriages in pursuit of the gold. Tragically, at least five people actually died in the unforgiving wilderness trying to solve Fenn's riddle. It became so dangerous that state police literally begged Fenn to call the hunt off. He completely refused. Finally, in June 2020, a 32-year-old medical student named Jack Stuef successfully decoded the poem and found the chest hidden in the Wyoming wilderness. Just two months later, Forrest Fenn passed away at the age of 90. He lived exactly long enough to see his wild, decade-long game finally beaten.