Meet the treasure hunter who found Forrest Fenn’s bounty after years of searching

For years, people have risked their lives looking through mountains, canyons and all across the West to find hidden treasure. Now we finally know who found it.

The coveted Forrest Fenn treasure has been sought by treasure hunters since 2010 when Forrest Fenn of New Mexico reported he hid a chest somewhere in the Rocky Mountains.

People have been caught digging in historic cemeteries, rappelling canyons and risking their lives to find the stash of gold, rubies, emeralds and diamonds.

While thousands of people searched high and low for the treasure, one man found it. On Monday, he revealed his name to the world.

“My name is Jack Stuef, and I am the finder of the Forrest Fenn Treasure,” Stuef wrote in a statement posted to Medium. “I searched for it for two years, and on June 6 of this year, I retrieved the treasure from the place I found it in Wyoming, the same place Forrest hid it 10 years ago. I now own the treasure chest.”

Shiloh Forrest Old, a grandchild of Forrest Fenn, confirmed in a statement Stuef found and retrieved the treasure. Outside Magazine exchanged emails with Stuef over the course of two months before he told the Outside writer his name.

“The finder’s name is Jonathan ‘Jack’ Stuef,” the grandchild wrote. “Jack found the treasure chest as a result of years of careful searching, without any help from my grandfather, myself, or any other member of our family.”

For six months, Stuef stayed anonymous because he didn’t want any potential danger to come to him or his family, he wrote. A lawsuit and federal court order pushed him to come forward as the Fenn finder, he said in the Medium post.

The family was going to be required to provide Stuef’s name and contact information, so it was impossible to keep his identity a secret any longer.

While Stuef’s identity may be public, the story of how he found the treasure will remain a secret. Fenn wanted the chest’s location to remain unknown because he feared people would ruin the site, Fenn’s family wrote.

Stuef realized some people hoped he would “reveal what the clues in the poem meant and where the treasure was located, but I feel a responsibility to keep that a secret,” he wrote. “I have never revealed where I searched for and found the chest to any person other than some whose job requires them to know that information and keep it confidential, and I never plan to do so.”

This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 12:47 PM with the headline "Meet the treasure hunter who found Forrest Fenn’s bounty after years of searching."