Santa Fe, New Mexico, resident Forrest Fenn announced Sunday that someone has finally found the treasure chest filled with over $1 million in valuables that he hid in the Rocky Mountains in 2010, ABC News reports.
The 89-year-old author said the man who found the hidden treasure wished to remain anonymous, but was from “back East.” Fenn had filled the chest with gold dust, rare coins, pre-Columbian statues, rubies, emeralds and Chinese faces carved into jade, and buried it as a way to tempt people to get into the wilderness and begin an old-fashioned expedition looking for riches. He said the chest weighed over 20 pounds.
He gave clues about its whereabouts in a 24-line poem that was published in his 2010 autobiography The Thrill of the Chase. Hundreds of thousands searchers participated, with some even quitting their jobs and depleting their savings in their quests.
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 wrote on his website.