For almost ten years, a bronze box filled with gold and jewelry was buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, drawing an estimated 350,000 hunters, according to Heritage Auctions, to roam through the mountains and canyons of America. Forrest Fenn, an art dealer in Santa Fe, hid the treasure in 2010 and published his memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, the same year, launching the hunt. The memoir contained a poem made up of 24 lines and nine clues. According to Fenn, the motivation behind the hiding of the chest was his diagnosis with kidney cancer in 1988, which appeared to be fatal initially but turned out to be nonfatal. The author finally hid the chest in 2010 and published his memoir during the same year so as to cheer people up after the Great Recession.
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