The Wall Street Journal - Deaths Prompt Millionaire to Rethink Legendary Treasure Hunt
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June 22, 2017. Dan Frosch, Covey E. Son.
Forrest Fenn claims to have hidden gold in New Mexico’s mountains, but two men have died in pursuit of the treasure.
Santa Fe, N.M.—An eccentric millionaire, who claims to have hidden gold and gems in the mountains of northern New Mexico, is considering calling off the legendary treasure hunt after a man died recently looking for the bounty.
Antiques dealer Forrest Fenn, whose treasure hunt has drawn thousands to the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, said the death of Paris Wallace, a Colorado pastor, has compelled him to re-examine the popular search.
“I am thinking about several options, including stopping the search,” he said. “I have consulted several friends who are helping me decide.”
Sometime in mid-June, Mr. Wallace set out from his home in Grand Junction, Colo., and headed for New Mexico—hoping, like so many others before him, to find the chest of gold that Mr. Fenn had supposedly hidden there.
On Sunday, two rafters discovered what police believe was the body of Mr. Wallace, 52 years old, floating in the Rio Grande River, not far from the rugged area where he was searching.
In recent days, New Mexico State Police Chief Pete Kassetas has called for Mr. Fenn to end the quest, saying it had gotten too dangerous.
“I guarantee you that if this continues, there will be more people lost, more searches launched, and more people are going to die,” Chief Kassetas said. “The question I have for Mr. Fenn is what can we do to avoid it? Is there a better way to get people up off their couch and explore New Mexico than doing it this way?”
Mr. Fenn, 86, who lives in Santa Fe, said he respected Chief Kassetas, but wasn’t yet certain how he was going to proceed.
For seven years now, droves of people are thought to have journeyed to the area, looking for Mr. Fenn’s treasure, guided by clues laid out in his 2010 memoir.
Some have occasionally have become lost on their quest, though authorities said they didn’t know the precise number. One man stalked Mr. Fenn’s granddaughter, believing she was the “treasure” Mr. Fenn was writing about.
Forrest Fenn said he has hidden a bronze chest filled with gold, valuable prehistoric bracelets, necklaces and gems. Above, an updated photo provided by Mr. Fenn.
Mr. Fenn, a former Vietnam War fighter pilot, included a poem in his self-published memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase,” with nine clues supposedly scattered within the stanzas, along with a map that promised to lead people to the buried treasure chest.
Begin it where warm waters halt
And take it in the canyon down,
Not far, but too far to walk.
Put in below the home of Brown.
Mr. Fenn says he has indeed hidden a bronze chest filled with 20.2 troy pounds of gold, valuable prehistoric bracelets, necklaces and gems. Some treasure hunters have estimated the bounty’s worth at between $1 million and $2 million. Mr. Fenn says it’s impossible to put a value on the treasure because the price of gold is ever changing.
As Mr. Fenn has dangled additional clues over the years, the hunt has lured scores of people to New Mexico from all over the world—upward of 100,000 over the past seven years, according to Dal Neitzel, a Washington man who has devoted a blog to the hunt.
An annual gathering called Fennboree has even sprung up in New Mexico, where treasure hunters and their families camp out and swap tales of their efforts to unravel Mr. Fenn’s great mystery.
But the riddle has never been solved. And some have questioned whether there’s really any buried treasure at all.
Chief Kassetas has said if the bounty does indeed exist, then Mr. Fenn should pull it from the ground. The latest search had forced volunteer rescue workers to operate in dangerous terrain as they scoured for signs of Mr. Wallace, he said.
Mr. Wallace’s wife initially contacted police on June 14, the day he was supposed to return home, saying she had last heard from him the day before.
Mr. Wallace told his wife that he was off to search for the treasure, packing plenty of food, clothes and his laptop, which he’d used to map coordinates of the caramel-colored canyons and cliffs near Taos where he thought it might be located, a police report said.
During their search for him, police discovered in his motel room the laptop with the mapping coordinates, which in turn led them to his vehicle, where they found climbing ropes fashioned to a large rock.
Mr. Wallace’s wife, Mitzi, told the Associated Press that she would carry on her husband’s search for the treasure with her son.
Mr. Fenn called Mr. Wallace’s death a “terrible tragedy,” saying that it had affected him “in a profound way.”
“My prayers go out to Pastor Wallace’s wife, his friends and his congregation,” he said in an email.
Mr. Wallace isn’t the only person to perish in the search for treasure. Last summer, following an extensive search, the body of 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu was discovered along the Rio Grande River not far from Santa Fe.
Mr. Bilyeu, who had moved to Colorado from Florida to look for the treasure, had gone missing about seven months earlier after setting out with a raft and his dog, Leo. Mr. Fenn said he’d chartered a helicopter at one point in the hopes of finding the missing man.
Mr. Bilyeu’s ex-wife, Linda, has since spoken out against the hunt, writing an open letter to Mr. Fenn, in which she blamed him for using clues to manipulate treasure seekers like her husband.
Ms. Bilyeu called on Mr. Fenn to come forward and admit the treasure is a hoax, saying that she believes more will get hurt or die if the search continues. “I think [Mr. Fenn] has dug himself into a big hole and he does not know how to get out of it,” Ms. Bilyeu said in an interview.
Mr. Neitzel, the blogger, said criticism of Mr. Fenn was unfair and that people are responsible for their own actions when they decide to head out into the wilderness. He himself claims to have searched in vain for the treasure more than 65 times.
“What kid hasn’t pretended he was on a boat and waved a stick in the air pretending it was a sword, pretending to look for lost treasure?” he said. “So why not do it for real? Forrest was kind and generous enough to put this thing out there.”
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