The Place Where a Story Ended: Expanded Edition

By Hamice Cadae

Forrest Fenn, a wealthy and eccentric art dealer, started a treasure hunt by filling a bronze chest with over 20 pounds of gold and jewels, hiding it somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and then daring the public to find it. A cryptic poem within his book, The Thrill of the Chase, held clues to its location. Solve the riddles, and the treasure was yours.

300,000 people from around the world searched for the treasure without success. Then, a decade after the hunt began, it ended in a cloud of mystery. Where was it hidden? What was the solution to the poem? All that remained in the story's aftermath were questions, echoing unanswered across the vast expanse of the Rockies.

The Place Where a Story Ended chronicles one man's expansive search through the teeth of the Rockies, discovering that the treasure chest was a lure that Fenn cast into a sea of people, hoping someone would take the bait and uncover the story behind the story. This book weaves together all the loose ends into a cohesive last chapter of The Thrill of the Chase, and in so doing, it reveals the solution to the mystery and story hidden within.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hamice Cadae
• Release date: Dec 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9781737849636

Book preview

PART I

Game Theory

It’s About Time

Give me six hours to chop down a tree

and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

Abraham Lincoln

Forrest Fenn’s treasure hunt had been in play for eight years before I heard about it. The chase lasted ten years total, and I was starting the race at year eight. That was like running a marathon where the competition had a 20-mile head start. As far as I knew, the chest had just been stashed under the bed of some other searcher while I was reading the first page of Forrest’s memoir, The Thrill of the Chase. I was late to the game, but I still wanted to play. The question was, could I catch up to the pack? Could I pass them?

The key to playing catch up in Forrest’s game was not about years but hours. Over the previous eight years, how many hours did the other players devote to the chase in serious study? If I could match the number of hours within the next six months, I might be a contender. To do that, every spare moment I had would have to be spent working on the chase.

But it wasn’t just about time, it was about quality time. A triage, of sorts, was needed to prioritize the allocation of resources, my most precious resource being time.

The first thing I did to further that goal was to exclude anything that was not a primary source or hinted at by Forrest through a primary source. I shied away from magazine and newspaper articles as well as audio and video that was lacking context. I was, however, interested in old, pre-2010, material about Forrest.

My obsession with primary source material was such that I was too diligent and excluded some sources that I shouldn’t have. For instance, I didn’t find out about the scrapbooks until the summer of 2019. I knew about DalNeitzel.com, where the scrapbooks were located, but I thought it was just another random treasure searcher’s blog. I kicked myself for missing that trove of information. And, to answer the inevitable question from searchers: yes. Yes, I think there are hints in the scrapbooks—a lot of hints.

For those who don’t know, the scrapbooks are short stories—mostly written by Forrest—of the same sort found in Forrest’s memoirs. The scrapbooks were hosted on DalNeitzel.com, which is, as of this writing, no longer operational. Dal Neitzel, a friend of Forrest’s, did all the dirty work needed to host Forrest’s ramblings and rumblings. Forrest’s third memoir, Once Upon a While, was created from stories in the scrapbooks, and those who paid attention to Dal’s website got to read that book before it was published.

Outside of Forrest’s books, if I did not personally hear Forrest make a statement, then, as far as my research was concerned, Forrest never made that statement. My distrust of written articles was so deep that, to this day, I still have not read some of them. Audio and video interviews that were lacking context were not trusted any more than written articles.

Fixating on primary source material was about giving myself the advantage of not going down someone else’s rabbit hole. Time triage is not only about where to spend time, but where not to spend time, and time spent tracking down whether a supposed quote by Forrest was genuine or not was time wasted.

Within the primary source material, I still needed to prioritize where to spend the available time. For example, some of the images in The Thrill of the Chase seem odd, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they contained a hint or two. But finding hints in images is not my forte, so I didn’t travel far down that path. Similarly, I never looked at methods such as anagrams or ciphers. I thought that the poem would have already been solved if clues or major hints were encoded using those methods.

It all came down to how to best utilize the time available. I did not have the luxury of testing multiple theories. I needed to focus on the primary method I thought Forrest used to hide the clues and hints. There was, of course, a chance I could have been wrong, but I placed my bet on a deep analysis of Forrest’s words.

Trying to find every advantage I could, I restricted myself to a single solution or interpretation of the poem. I would be all-in on one and only one solution. I could research multiple solutions from home, but the moment I opened the door, got in the car, and headed out to do a boots-on-the-ground search, that was it. If I was wrong, I was done.

This single solution restriction eliminated time spent on reconnaissance trips to various hunches that crossed my path. In addition to conserving time, this had the added benefit of helping to eliminate weak solutions. I had a single chip to play and was not about to place my bet unless I was well over 90% certain that there was a bronze chest waiting at the destination.

The exercise of time management and of concentrating my research into such a short timespan had enormous benefits. Everything was fresh in my mind. I could make connections between different sources of information that I would have missed had the research been spread out over several years. I am confident that 1,000 hours spent over six months, for example, was worth far more than 1,000 hours spent over six years. That I was able to start my search with access to all three of Forrest’s memoirs multiplied the effect for yet another advantage.

After nine hundred hours of research, the general area where Forrest had hidden the treasure was coming into focus. One thousand hours after that, and I was standing in front of the blaze. The effort paid off.

Shall We Play a Game?

All human errors are impatience, a premature

breaking off of methodical procedure.

Franz Kafka

With other searchers having an eight-year head start, it was necessary to spend the time I had available as wisely as possible. That concept applied not only to what source material to research but how to apply that research. It was tempting to dive right in, look at a map, and start playing hunches based on some hint I may or may not have interpreted correctly, but I knew that was a losing strategy.

Developing a methodical approach was my best chance at deciphering the clues in the poem, but that would take time. In jest, I said that it was like a marathon where the competition had a 20-mile head start, but that was not true at all. The starting line, finish line, and route were all unknown. Someone who started three months before me might have just figured out the last clue, while someone who started eight years before that might have been looking at the wrong map the entire time. There was no way to know. One thing I did know was that if someone else was so close that I did not have time for a methodical approach, then I had already lost the game.

That’s what The Thrill of the Chase was: a winner-take-all game. There was a game designer, a referee, a playing field, a rule book, and players. A challenge was even thrown down by the game designer, That treasure chest, I have said, is in a very special place to me. If I get another disease, on my last dying gasp, I’m going to throw myself on top of that treasure chest, and I’m going to dare you to come find me. Some form of I dare you to go get it was one of Forrest’s often-repeated catchphrases in interviews.

My approach to Forrest’s game was to reverse engineer the method Forrest had used to create the game and then develop a solution method based on the creation method. To determine how Forrest created his masterwork, I needed to look at what obstacles stood in his way. Here are a few of the significant constraints:

Forrest knew of the hiding spot before he decided to create the game. It was a very special place to him. It had to be that precise hiding spot.

The solution had to be solvable with just the poem and a map. Both are available for free, and anyone could play. Although other material, such as books and interviews, may provide hints, those items could not be required. Packing enough information into the poem to lead a searcher to the precise hiding spot was essential.

Designing such a game in the age of computers and Internet search engines would be challenging. With the sum of human knowledge available at arm’s reach, any subject can be researched with ease. Difficult anagrams can be solved with a few keystrokes. Place names on maps are available with the press of a button. Custom computer programs can be written to gather, cross-reference, and analyze an unlimited amount of data. All of this had to be considered, and the game had to be resistant to it.

Most game designers have the luxury of play-testing their games and adjusting the difficulty based on user feedback. Because play-testing is so challenging to get right, many computer games let you set the difficulty based on your abilities and play style. Those options were not available to Forrest. Once he released his game, that was it. He either got it right, or he didn’t.

The easiest way to understand all of this is to imagine yourself walking in Forrest’s shoes. How would you design a game that considers every difficulty that Forrest faced? For me, answering that question was helped somewhat by knowing that Forrest’s game had stood up to eight years and a few hundred thousand pairs of eyeballs.

In a sense, I was not searching for where the treasure chest was; I was searching for where the treasure chest was not. The cost of this research was time. The benefit of this research was time. I was wagering that the benefit would outweigh the cost.

I dare you to go get it! Challenge Accepted.

The Game Designer

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore.

Edgar Allan Poe

In most games, knowing about the game designer does not matter. For some games, however, learning about the designer can reveal critical details about how the game was created and, possibly, how best to play it.

The stated objective of Forrest’s game was to find his treasure chest. Solve the clues, find the chest, win the game. The clues led to a very special place to Forrest, one to which he had an almost umbilical connection. There was no other place that he considered hiding the chest. Forrest stressed this point so often and with such intensity that it could only mean one thing: to Forrest, the game was not about a treasure chest; it was about this special place.

This not-so-hidden subtext was all about a location that was so special to Forrest that he said he wanted to die there. Continuing and incorporating this conclusion into my methodology was troublesome for me. My initial reaction was to put the books down and step back. This was much more than a simple treasure hunt. Did I want to play this game?

After a bit of reflection, I realized that Forrest was asking for this. He wanted it. Forrest stated that his goal was to get people off their texting machines and out into the mountains and nature. If that was his only goal, he could have hidden the chest anywhere and kept his very special place secret forever, but he did not do that. He hid a chest full of gold, published a book about it, and then dared people to find it. Forrest wanted someone to find that special location. The treasure chest was not the objective—it was a lure, and Forrest cast that lure into a sea of people, hoping one of them would take the bait. Forrest wanted the location known to at least one person, and he was willing to pay someone to figure it out.

An alternative explanation was that the entirety of the Rocky Mountains was special to Forrest, or maybe the entirety of Yellowstone. Forrest had an almost umbilical connection to the Rocky Mountains as a whole and wanted to die there, under a tree somewhere deep in a pine forest and let my body go back to the earth. This explanation does give the getting people out into nature statements more weight. In this day where many are glued to their computers and smartphones, the poem’s creation revived an old recreation. None of that would help find the treasure chest, but it was a possibility I kept in mind.

My belief at the time was that it was the precise location that was significant. That location held a special meaning to Forrest. A similar or more scenic site a mile away wouldn’t do; it had to be that exact spot. What was so special about that exact location? I had no idea, but I was certain there was more to the story than a bronze chest full of gold.

Forrest said that he intentionally inserted errors in his books to see if people would find them. Those errors were both good and bad news. While it meant that I could not trust the information in Forrest’s books, it also meant the errors might contain hints.

Forrest hid hints amidst personal stories about his life. If searchers wanted to find the hints, they had to study and analyze Forrest’s life. They had to get to know his wife, Peggy, his mother and father, his brother, Skippy, and sister, June, as well as his two wiener dogs, Bip and Tesuque. They had to read about Forrest’s growing up in Temple, Texas, and traveling 1,600 miles at 35 miles per hour to Yellowstone every summer for vacation. And, if they read nothing else, according to Forrest, they should read his story, My War For Me, included in The Thrill of the