By Tim Binnall
A lawsuit surrounding the legendary Forrest Fenn treasure has resulted in the revelation that it was almost certainly hidden in Yellowstone National Park. Launched in 2010 when the eccentric art dealer announced that he had placed a sizeable cache of riches somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, the epic treasure hunt concluded in June of 2020 with the announcement that the riches had finally been found. The news proved to be rather anticlimactic as both Fenn and the 'finder,' later revealed to be a man named Jack Stuef, refused to divulge where the treasure had been hidden for the last decade. Now, nearly two years later, the maddening mystery has moved considerably closer to being solved at last.
The tantalizing new insight, detailed in a fantastic piece by the website Outside, comes courtesy of a lawsuit filed by Jamie McCracken, who alleges that Fenn's treasure hunt was not on the level and, as such, has sued his estate. While a number of similar cases have been dismissed, this particular attempt has proven to be successful so far and is set for trial next month. As part of the legal wrangling heading into the proceedings, McCracken was to depose Stuef and it was expected that he would be able to extract the exact location of the treasure from the 'finder' when given the opportunity to question him under oath.
Remarkably, it was at this point that the federal government got involved in the case and filed a motion to intervene in the lawsuit with the somewhat vague reasoning that the treasure was hidden on federally owned land managed by the Department of the Interior and that revealing the precise spot to the public could be problematic. As evidence for this, they provided an enlightening affidavit wherein the chief ranger of Yellowstone National Park, Sarah Davis, testified to having been told the location by Fenn and Stuef in August of 2020 and that a subsequent examination of the area found that it was not conducive to becoming a veritable tourist attraction. Her testimony and the government's description of the spot would appear to confirm longstanding suspicions that it was hidden in Yellowstone.
That conclusion is strengthened by an email, unearthed by McCracken's lawsuit, wherein Stuef contacted Fenn upon his discovery of the treasure and used carefully crafted language to suggest that the art dealer would 'give' him the riches by virtue of his having found them. This is believed to be a clever loophole to maneuver around laws surrounding property found in national parks and that instructions regarding the verbiage may have been included in the chest alongside the riches. Fortunately for frustrated treasure hunters, the judge overseeing McCracken's case refused the government's motion and so he will soon be allowed to depose Stuef, which may provide answers to the lingering questions that still surround the modern mystery of Fenn's Treasure.