$1million chest hidden in the Rocky Mountains for treasure hunt is finally found after hundreds of thousands joined in decade-long search that KILLED five

The $1million treasure famously hidden in the Rocky Mountains by eccentric art dealer Forrest Fenn a decade ago has finally been found. 

Since Fenn, now 89, announced the treasure hunt in his 2010 memoir, thousands of thrill-seekers have been drawn to the Rockies in search of the prize, and at least five men have lost their lives trying to find it. 

But the bronze chest filled with rare gold coins and gold nuggets, pre-Columbian animal figures,  prehistoric 'mirrors' of hammered gold, ancient Chinese faces carved from jade and antique jewellery has now been found by  an explorer who chose to remain anonymous. 

Fenn, 89, said that the man from 'back East' located the chest a few days ago, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports. The man sent a photograph to Fenn to verify his find.

Fenn still will not reveal the exact location of the treasure but said in a statement on his website: '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.

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

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Fenn, 89, an eccentric art dealer, in 2010 announced that he had buried a treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. This undated photo provided by Fenn shows a chest purported to contain gold dust, hundreds of gold coins, gold nuggets and other artifacts

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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'

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.'

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.' He came up with the idea after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1988 and given a 20 percent survival rate.

Hundreds of thousands have hunted in vain across remote corners for the bronze chest which weighs 20 pounds. Its valuable contents weigh an added 22 pounds and it was hidden by Fenn over two separate trips. 

Fenn never said it was ‘buried' but instead emphasized that it was ‘hidden’.

Many quit their jobs to dedicate themselves to the search and others depleted their life savings. At least five people died searching for it, the most recent being in March when Michael Sexson, 53, from Deer Park was found dead.

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Left: Scott Etzel of Houston, Texas, displays a map of previously explored places of Forrest Fenn's hidden treasure. Mr. Fenn marked the right spot in Santa Fe, New Mexico on June 23, 2018. Right: Toby Younis, a 69-year-old father of six and grandfather of ten, is pictured in 2018

In 2016, Randy Bilyeu died in the wilderness West of Santa Fe after he went hunting for the illusive treasure. Jeff Murphy, 53, Pastor Paris Wallice and Eric Ashby, 31, all died in 2017 during their search.

Fenn faced calls to stop the hunt as the death toll increased with New Mexico police branding it 'nonsense and insanity.'

Fenn, who lives in Santa Fe, 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.

His books and poem have sparked a frenzy in the world of amateur sleuths and treasure hunters making Fenn's treasure a world-wide phenomenon.

An annual festival aptly called Fennboree brought them together to swap stories, meet Fenn himself and ruminate on the meaning of his clues and directives. 

Avid treasure hunters picked apart his every quote and equated his every word with anything from local history to his personal background in an effort to decipher the coordinates of the hidden bounty. But Fenn gave almost nothing away to anyone.

Key elements mentioned in the poem are ‘warm waters halt,’ ‘the blaze,’ ‘canyon down’ and ‘home of Brown’ – all of which are open to interpretation by searchers, who have traced them to landmarks across Colorado, New Mexico, Montana and Wyoming.

One of the major clues is that it’s at a location that was reachable by a man 79 years old, which was Forrest’s age when he hid the chest.

In an interview in 2018, Fenn explained why he decided to hide the bounty.   

‘I had several motives,’ Fenn said. ‘First of all, we were going into a recession – lots of people losing their jobs. I wanted to give some people hope. Despair was written all over the newspaper headlines.

‘And secondly, we’re an overweight society – I think not only in this country, but the world,’ said Fenn, who ran a successful Santa Fe art gallery with his wife for 17 years. 

‘So I wanted to get the kids away from their electronic gadgets … and out into the sunshine, out into the mountains, hiking, fishing, picnicking – and anything but the couch. Get out of the game room.’

In addition to the cryptic poem and hints in his memoir, Fenn let a few details slip over the years – saying the treasure is at least 8.25 miles north of Santa Fe and that it’s above an elevation of 5,000 feet.

The treasure hunt exploded in popularity after it was featured in an article in an airline magazine; the next day, Fenn received 1,200 emails and his computer crashed, he said.

‘I didn’t expect it to catch fire like it has, but I think 350,000 people have been looking for the treasure,’ Fenn told DailyMail.com. ‘Of course, it’s been eight years, too; some of them go back multiple times.’

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Michael Wayne Sexson, 53, was found dead in a remote part of Colorado's Dinosaur National Monument (pictured) in March, where he and a friend were looking for Forrest Fenn's treasure

Fenn masterminded the treasure hunt even before he settled on the bounty, the location or the date when he would finally hide it. 

The idea came to him after he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1988 and given a 20 percent survival rate.

‘I went through all of the emotions like everybody else does – denial, anger, all of those things,’ said Fenn, who has two daughters with his wife. 

‘But then, after a week or so, I told myself: “Okay – if I’ve got to go, who says I can’t take it with me?” I had a bunch of stuff, and I had so much fun collecting it over 75 years, why not give somebody else the same opportunity that I had?

‘I mean, I’m not going to miss these things. My family has been cared for. And so I got this beautiful little treasure chest; I gave $25,000 for it, and I started. My problem was, I wanted it to be valuable, but I also wanted it to be survivable, also. That boils down to gold, essentially, and precious gems.’ 

He began assembling a cache that included ‘hundreds and hundreds of gold nuggets.’

He added: ‘I’ve given to charity, and everybody else has, too. That’s been done. I wanted to do something that would last. I wanted to introduce the Rocky Mountains to people – flatlanders – that’d go back over and over again. I mean, if I gave to a charity, that’d be the end of it.

‘A 79 or 80 year old man went to that hiding place twice in one afternoon. There’s no point climbing up to the top of the mountain or hiking 20 miles looking for the treasure.’

That’s a fact that one avid searcher has kept in mind throughout his 29 ‘recon’ missions to date. 

Toby Younis – who co-runs a youtube channel dedicated to the search, Gypsy’s Kiss – said that every site he identifies as possibly relevant to the search must be what he calls ‘Fenny.’ 

‘Almost immediately, when we go to a new search area, we ask ourselves: Is it Fenny enough?’ he said, meaning that the site has to not only be lush and beautiful but also accessible by an elderly man. 

Younis – a father of six and grandfather of ten – is 69 years old himself.

‘We start asking ourselves, could an 80-year-old man have done this with a 20lb weight? And it’s real easy,’ Younis said. 

‘Within a very short period of time, if I find myself breathing hard, slipping on rocks, walking along an edge … then I say to myself, Forrest Fenn would not have done this at the age of 80 alone, right?’ 

Younis found himself in a bit of a hairy situation on his first recon mission with his adult son in August 2013, when he traced ‘warm waters halt’ to a dam at the Rio Chama. The father-and-son team had arrived in an SUV with front-wheel drive, went down into a valley, forded a stream, went up the other side of the valley and then hiked two miles.

‘August is unpredictable, in the sense that every afternoon you’re going to get rainstorms,’ Younis said. 

‘I kept telling my son, we need to start moving back in case it starts raining, ‘cause we’ll have a hell of a time getting back up.’

That’s exactly what happened, however, and the river swelled so high that they couldn’t get back across – having to spend the night on the other side.

‘The following day, a group of hunters came over the hill; we were trying to create a dam so that we could ford the river,’ Younis said. ‘These hunters came down in this huge four-wheel drive; they were going scouting because the hunting season was opening the following day, and they would pull us back up on the other side.’

He added: ‘That was the closest we ever came to feeling like we had made a dangerous decision.’ 

Other searchers, however, have not been so lucky. Chicago man Jeff Murphy went hiking on the Montana-Wyoming border, only for his body to be found June 9 at the bottom of a steep, rocky slope in 2017. 

Paris Wallace, a 52-year-old pastor from Colorado, disappeared in the Rio Grande Gorge in New Mexico; his body was pulled from a riverbank. Eric Ashby, a 31-year-old who’d moved to Colorado to advance his search, drowned after traveling by raft down the Arkansas River in the state.

The previous year, 54-year-old Randy Bilyeu had also died; he disappeared while searching in New Mexico, and his body was pulled six months later from the Rio Grande.

In March this year, Michael Sexson, 53, from Deer Park was found dead while on the hunt.

The deaths have led authorities to send out warnings and ask Fenn to call off the treasure hunt, which he seems to have no intention of doing any time soon – though he has decided on a cut-off point.

‘If there’s been some violence like fist fights or somebody’s murdered or something, that’s the end of it,’ he said.

He's a man who's seen his share of violence firsthand in his Air Force career, during which he served in both the Korean and Vietnam Wars and was shot down twice. 

Fenn was rewarded with a Silver Star, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Bronze Star, 16 Air Medals and a Purple  Heart.

'The world has got to learn to start leaving people alone,' he said. 'Not only we as a world, but us as a people.'