What we are taking as fact:
♦Located above 5,000 ft.
♦At least 8.25 miles North of Santa Fe
♦Not in grave yard
♦Not in out house…..not associated with a structure
♦Chest and contents weigh 42lbs. (Fenn said 44lbs. in one email, but has said 42 several other times)
♦Chest is 10x10x5 inches and made of Bronze
Subjective information:
♦Don’t go where an eighty year old man couldn’t go
♦Not associated with a structure……what does “associated” mean?
Def: Connect (something) with something else because they occur together or one produces another Does this rule out it being in town? Could it be in a front yard, park, Memorial, etc. etc.; as long as it is not in a structure?
♦Seasonal search: Since it’s above 5,000 ft. just about all of the search area will be impacted by some snow. As the elevation increases the “search season” decreases.
♦Located in Rocky Mountains: What does Fenn consider the “Rocky Mountains”
Fenn has said:
♦ There are nine clues in the poem.
♦ Start at beginning
♦ Q: Will the poem lead you to the treasure? “Yes if you know where to start.”
♦ Clues in consecutive order
♦ Don’t mess with my poem
♦ “Some folks correctly mentioned the first two clues to me in an email and then they went right past the other seven, not knowing that they had been so close”.
♦ People have been within 500’ of the treasure
♦ He never said it was buried (he never said it wasn’t)
♦ “The person who finds the treasure will have studied the poem over and over, and thought, and analyzed and moved with confidence. Nothing about it will be accidental”.
♦ “I said on the Today show that the treasure is not associated with any structure. Some people say I have a desire to mislead. That is not true. There are no notes to be found or safety deposit boxes to be searched. The clues can lead you to the treasure, and it will be there waiting when you arrive.”
♦ Q: Are there clues in the book? “Yes, because the poem is in the book.”
♦ Q: Are there subtle hints in the book? “Yes, if you can recognize them.”
♦ “All of the information you need to find the treasure is in the poem. The chapters in my book have very subtle hints but are not deliberately placed to aid the seeker. Good luck in the search.”
♦Located above 5,000 ft.
♦At least 8.25 miles North of Santa Fe
♦Not in grave yard
♦Not in out house…..not associated with a structure
♦Chest and contents weigh 42lbs. (Fenn said 44lbs. in one email, but has said 42 several other times)
♦Chest is 10x10x5 inches and made of Bronze
Subjective information:
♦Don’t go where an eighty year old man couldn’t go
♦Not associated with a structure……what does “associated” mean?
Def: Connect (something) with something else because they occur together or one produces another Does this rule out it being in town? Could it be in a front yard, park, Memorial, etc. etc.; as long as it is not in a structure?
♦Seasonal search: Since it’s above 5,000 ft. just about all of the search area will be impacted by some snow. As the elevation increases the “search season” decreases.
♦Located in Rocky Mountains: What does Fenn consider the “Rocky Mountains”
Fenn has said:
♦ There are nine clues in the poem.
♦ Start at beginning
♦ Q: Will the poem lead you to the treasure? “Yes if you know where to start.”
♦ Clues in consecutive order
♦ Don’t mess with my poem
♦ “Some folks correctly mentioned the first two clues to me in an email and then they went right past the other seven, not knowing that they had been so close”.
♦ People have been within 500’ of the treasure
♦ He never said it was buried (he never said it wasn’t)
♦ “The person who finds the treasure will have studied the poem over and over, and thought, and analyzed and moved with confidence. Nothing about it will be accidental”.
♦ “I said on the Today show that the treasure is not associated with any structure. Some people say I have a desire to mislead. That is not true. There are no notes to be found or safety deposit boxes to be searched. The clues can lead you to the treasure, and it will be there waiting when you arrive.”
♦ Q: Are there clues in the book? “Yes, because the poem is in the book.”
♦ Q: Are there subtle hints in the book? “Yes, if you can recognize them.”
♦ “All of the information you need to find the treasure is in the poem. The chapters in my book have very subtle hints but are not deliberately placed to aid the seeker. Good luck in the search.”
The gold includes 265 coins, pre-Columbian animal figures, gold dust, placer nuggets and two pre-Columbian, hammered gold “mirrors”. The mirrors are 4-5 inches in diameter and have holes in them for wearing. But what about the “other items”? Forrest, once again helps us out. In his memoir he mentions some of the items that are not pure gold and therefore not already accounted for. He mentions the following:
- Ancient Chinese human faces carved from jade
- 17th century Spanish gold ring with large emerald
- Antique dragon coat bracelet with 254 rubies, 6 emeralds, 2 sapphires and numerous diamonds
- Silver bracelet with 22 turquoise disc beads and a wonderful history
- 2,000 year old Indian necklace from Columbia
- Modern olive jar with biography inside
You west coast rx'ers find this yet?????
[h=1]On the trail of treasure in the Rocky Mountains[/h]
Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico antiquities dealer, says the location of his hidden treasure appears on this map, published in his book, “Too Far to Walk,” and that all the clues needed for its discovery are included in this poem, first published in his book, “The Thrill of the Chase.” Credit: Forrest Fenn.
By Mary Capterton Morton
“Where warm waters halt… where warm waters halt… where warm waters halt.” For two summers, I’ve been exploring the Rocky Mountains with those words on my mind. Why those four words in particular? Because I believe they lead to a modern-day treasure chest.
In 2010, Forrest Fenn, a retired antiquities dealer based in Santa Fe, N.M., set about creating his own legend: He bought an antique bronze chest and filled it with valuables and artifacts including gold dust, coins and nuggets, Chinese jade carvings, a 17th-century gold-and-emerald ring, an ancient turquoise bracelet — together worth between $1 million and $2 million — and then lugged all 19 kilograms of it to a mysterious hiding place somewhere “in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe.” He then released a poem containing nine clues as to the treasure’s whereabouts. More than four years later, nobody has yet found Fenn’s treasure, and he maintains that if it goes undiscovered, the chest will stay safely in place for hundreds of years.
The Fenn treasure has been valued between $1 million and $2 million and the chest itself — a 12th-century Roman lockbox made of sculpted bronze — has been said to be worth about $35,000. Credit: Forrest Fenn.
Thousands of people from all walks of life have gone searching for Fenn’s treasure in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana (Fenn has eliminated Utah and Idaho). When I heard about the treasure, I couldn’t help thinking about it from a geologist’s point of view: The poem implies that the treasure is hidden near water, but the courses of waterways can change drastically over time, even from season to season, let alone over centuries. And as someone interested in archaeology and paleontology, I’m well aware that if you find something interesting on public land, it’s not always “finders, keepers.” I was intrigued. Could I put my background in geology and my hiker’s knowledge of landscapes to work searching for a treasure chest?
[h=3]A Modern-Day Maverick[/h]
In the 1980s, Fenn, an amateur archaeologist, purchased the San Lazaro Pueblo, a prehistoric pueblo site settled about 700 years ago by the Tano tribe. Fenn has spent the last several decades excavating the pueblo, which grew to more than 2,000 rooms before being abandoned roughly 300 years ago. Credit: Forrest Fenn.
In some circles, Fenn cuts a notorious figure. As a private collector of Native American artifacts and a highly successful art and antiquities dealer, he has raised the ire of some scholars, curators and archaeologists over the years. But he’s also a local legend in Santa Fe’s art world, a self-proclaimed maverick, whose memoirs detail a lifetime of adventures, from lassoing a wild bison to flying fighter jets in Vietnam and traveling all over the world — Indiana Jones-style — in search of interesting artifacts.
Fenn began collecting at age 9, when he found his first arrowhead in a farmer’s field in Texas. Seven decades later, he still has that arrowhead and calls it his most treasured object in his vast, diverse collection of Native American artifacts, which includes dolls, ceremonial shields and pottery, among other items.
After that inspirational arrowhead, Fenn’s next-most-prized possessions may be Sitting Bull’s peace pipe or, on a larger scale, theSan Lazaro Pueblo: In the mid-1980s, Fenn bought 65 hectares in the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe that included a prehistoric pueblo site known as San Lazaro. Settled about 700 years ago by the Tano tribe, the pueblo grew to more than 2,000 rooms before being abandoned roughly 300 years ago. Fenn has personally been excavating the site for more than two decades, turning up relics such as ancient gaming pieces, beaded jewelry and human effigies, including a rare plaster mask.
“Fenn has a wonderful collection of Plains and Southwestern material that he has acquired over the last 40 years,” says Clinton Nagy, curator of the Splendid Heritage website, which catalogs private collections such as Fenn’s for educational purposes. “In my opinion, he has done a lot of good in preserving native culture.”
Fenn’s impressive resume and reputation seem to assure seekers that his treasure is no hoax. “I met Forrest many years ago when I lived in Santa Fe and worked in an Indian artifact gallery. He has an impeccable reputation in that world,” says Katya Luce, an avid treasure seeker who moved from Maui back to New Mexico to look for Fenn’s treasure. “Knowing Forrest, I never doubted for a moment whether the treasure was real.”
[h=3]Twenty-Four Lines, Nine Clues[/h]
Fenn estimates that at least 30,000 people have sought his treasure. Chief among them is Dal Neitzel, seen below searching a stream, who runs one of the most active Forrest Fenn treasure blogs. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.Fenn hid the treasure in 2010 after a cancer scare. “I became sick and thought I was on my way out and I wanted to inspire others to join in the thrill of the chase,” he says. The decision was not spur of the moment, however. His hiding location was a place he’d been visiting for many years. “I knew exactly where to hide the chest so it would be difficult to find but not impossible,” Fenn wrote in his 2011 memoir, “The Thrill of the Chase.” Fenn says he worked on the poem for a long time too, “changing and rearranging. Each word is crafted in its place. No part of it was not looked at from every angle.”
Fenn’s poem (see sidebar) contains nine clues that, he says, if followed correctly, will lead to his treasure chest. The poem is short and fairly simple, but contains enough fodder to hide a few potential red herrings. “Forrest is an exceedingly clever fellow. If anybody does ever solve his poem, I’m sure it’ll be full of twists and turns and double meanings,” says Dal Neitzel, who runs one of the most active Forrest Fenn treasure blogs. Fenn suggests that searchers start at the beginning of the poem and follow it linearly. After a few introductory lines, the poem reads: “Begin it where warm waters halt.” In my own experience, flowing water is rarely warm in the mountains, and it never halts. The most obvious interpretations of this clue suggest that it refers to a hot spring, or a dam with a relatively warm lake, although Fenn has said the “treasure is not associated with any manmade structure.”
Fenn is known to enjoy clever wordplay and double meanings. The “blaze” mentioned in the poem may or may not be a trail marker, like this rock etching found along the Rio Grande. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.Another very popular interpretation is that his use of “warm waters” is a nod to the New Mexico State Game and Fish Department’s classification of all streams, lakes and ponds – except those designated as trout waters – as “warm waters.” Fenn is an avid fly fisherman, so the phrase “where warm waters halt” could point to a boundary between warmer gamefish waters and colder trout waters.
“Forrest has said that people are thinking about the warm waters clue too hard,” Luce says. “But it’s a tricky one. What defines warm water? And what does it mean to say waters halt? That’s not really the nature of water.”
After the cryptic initial hint, the clues get a little more straightforward: “take it in the canyon down, not far but too far to walk,” which seems to imply a direction and that there is some distance to travel. But the next reference is a head-scratcher: “put in below the home of Brown.” “Put in” is a boating term so “brown” could reference a fishing hole for brown trout. Some people think it references the brown grizzly bears of Yellowstone. Still others scour maps and historical records for any place or person named Brown.
The next lines seem to hint at a difficult journey: “from there it’s no place for the meek, the end is ever drawing nigh; there’ll be no paddle up your creek, just heavy loads and water high.” This again seems to refer to a waterway, perhaps one that requires a boat and a portage. But it might be misleading to think of Fenn’s treasure as necessarily being hidden in some remote, difficult to reach place. After all, an ailing 80-year-old man carried it to the location by himself. He did it in two trips in one afternoon, he has said, carrying the chest in first and then the contents.
“The chest is not in a dangerous place,” he has said. “It’s somewhere you could take your kids.” But he has also said it’s not somewhere that anybody is likely to stumble upon it accidentally. “The person who finds the treasure will have studied the poem over and over, and thought and analyzed and moved with confidence. Nothing about it will be accidental,” Fenn says.
[h=3]On the Ground in Northern New Mexico[/h]
Phillip Mason (left) moved to Taos from northern Nevada two years ago to look for Fenn’s treasure. Some treasure seekers have interpreted “home of Brown” in the poem to refer to trout waters, as Fenn is an avid fisherman. Credit: both: Mary Caperton Morton.“The Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe” is a lot of ground to cover. So, I, like many searchers, chose to start in Fenn’s backyard in New Mexico. For my first expedition, in May 2013, a friend and I headed to Questa, about 30 kilometers north of Taos. Armed with topographic maps and old Bureau of Land Management (BLM) mining charts, we searched all around the Red River fish hatchery (a potential “home of Brown,” we thought), convinced we’d find it tucked inside the entrance of one of the many old mines in the area. But the only treasure we found was an intact coyote skull.
Then we moved south to the John Dunn Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande near Arroyo Hondo. The well-known, oft-frequented Manby Hot Springs bubbles just downstream from the bridge. We weren’t the only people on the hunt there; across the river we spotted three hikers using a metal detector to scan the basalt rubble that lines the Rio Grande Gorge.
We went home empty-handed and a little overwhelmed by the potential search area. Even if we were in the right place, the Rio Grande Gorge is immense, with countless pockets in the basalt walls for stashing a small bronze box. Even if we were in the right place, the chest could be anywhere in that landscape. “When I first started searching, I thought I knew for sure where it was, but the more I look, the further it seems I am from it,” Luce says.
The author and a friend searched near Manby Hot Springs in the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos, N.M. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.It was time to consult a professional: Phillip Mason moved to Taos from northern Nevada two years ago to look for Fenn’s treasure. Mason’s no amateur treasure seeker: He made a living mining gold in Nevada, and he has been systematically canvassing northern New Mexico for Fenn’s chest.
I told Mason I was working on a story about the Fenn treasure and he agreed to take me along on an expedition. When we met in downtown Taos, he asked, quite seriously: “If we find that chest today, how are we going to split it?” I told him he could have everything, but I wanted the turquoise bracelet, for which Fenn has offered a bounty (see sidebar). “You’ve done your homework,” Mason said approvingly.
Mason believes the quest begins at Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in New Mexico. “Forrest mentions a Taos Mountain in his book several times,” Mason says. “There’s no Taos Mountain on the map, but that’s one of the nicknames for Wheeler.” So we headed up the road to the Taos ski resort and parked at a few pullouts along the road to bushwhack upslope to some interesting landmarks that Mason thinks might line up with some of the clues.
Some treasure hunters believe the quest begins at Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in New Mexico. Taos Ski Valley is in the distance. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.After two seasons of searching with no luck, Mason has turned to a new source for inspiration: kids. “Forrest has a very creative, childlike mind, and I mean that in the best way,” he says. “I’ve been asking kids for their interpretation of the clues and I’ve been getting some very interesting answers. I don’t know if I’m any closer, but it sure is keeping the search fresh in my mind.”
[h=3]Finders, Keepers?[/h]According to Fenn, the treasure could be hidden in one of three places: “public land, tribal land or private property. It is not my intention to make a statement that will narrow the search area.” Most tribal lands are off-limits to outsiders, making places such as the backcountry wilderness around Blue Lake, held sacred by the Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico, an unlikely place for a treasure hunt.
Private land is a possibility, if it were unposted and accessed through public land. But Fenn is not known to own land other than San Lazaro, and he maintains that he hasn’t shared the location of the chest with anybody else, making it unlikely that he got permission from a private landowner to stash his treasure on their property. So that leaves public land as the most likely category.
The United States has more than 2 million square kilometers of public land managed by BLM, the National Park Service and the Forest Service. Most public land is open for recreational use, but the types of recreation permitted vary widely. In some places, like the BLM’s Wild Rivers Recreation Area in northern New Mexico, collecting rocks on the surface is permitted, while in national parks, toting off a piece of obsidian can result in a hefty fine.
One of the main legal distinctions hinges on whether the chest is buried; Fenn has hinted that it’s not. “On BLM land in New Mexico, as long as it’s not buried, if somebody found the chest, they would be permitted to take it,” says Allison Sandoval, a BLM representative in Santa Fe. Sandoval is quick to point out that artifacts such as arrowheads and pottery found on BLM land are not “finders, keepers,” however. “Fenn’s treasure isn’t an artifact. It’s kind of a unique situation, but as long as there’s no degradation of the land involved in collecting it, it’s fair game.”
Yellowstone National Park is a hot bed for searchers due to Fenn’s boyhood adventures in the park and around Hebgen Lake and West Yellowstone, but the National Park Service has an entirely different stance on collecting.
“Treasure hunting is not illegal in Yellowstone, but there’s a whole host of regulations that govern the preservation and use of national parks,” says Tim Reid, chief ranger at Yellowstone. “Metal detectors are illegal, digging is illegal, and you can’t remove any natural or cultural feature from the park.” If somebody were to find the Fenn treasure within the boundaries of Yellowstone, or any national park, it would be considered abandoned property, Reid says. “It’s not ‘finders, keepers.’ You would have to turn it in and go through a governmental procedure to lay claim to it.”
The treasure could be on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service or the Forest Service, which raises questions about its ownership if found. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.Some of the Fenn treasure hunters have run afoul of the rules in Yellowstone, and a handful have even gotten themselves banned from the park, Reid says. “People who choose to believe the treasure exists typically seem to be unprepared for wilderness conditions. We’ve had several search and rescues, and a host of violations; people have been cited and some have been arrested,” Reid says. “Some are lucky not to have been seriously injured or killed.”
Land-use regulations may seem to narrow the search field, but as Neitzel points out, Fenn hid the treasure without anybody seeing him do it, so somebody should be able to get the chest without getting caught by authorities. “The poem says ‘take the chest and go in peace,’ which may imply that a searcher shouldn’t make a fuss about where it was found,” Mason says.
“Forrest has said that there was nowhere he could have hid the treasure that would not involve some potential complications,” Mason says. “Maybe the answer is to take it clear of its hiding place and keep quiet about it.”
The Forest Service does not agree with that strategy, however. “If somebody were to find the chest and not report it, that’s theft of government property,” says Mike Bremer, a forest service archaeologist with the Santa Fe National Forest. “Frankly, I think this whole treasure hunt is a nuisance and a potential danger to the vast reserves of cultural artifacts and archaeology in Santa Fe National Forest.”
[h=3]A Quest for the Ages[/h]In the past four years, Fenn has issued a few additional hints about the location of his treasure, but he’s not giving it away: The chest is above 1,500 meters of elevation; it’s not associated with any manmade structure; and it’s not buried in a graveyard.
Curious about the long-term fate of both the chest and the quest, I asked Fenn whether the clues in the poem will also withstand the test of time. “I am guessing the clues will stand for centuries. That was one of my basic premises, but the treasure chest will fall victim to geological phenomena just like everything else. Who can predict earthquakes, floods, mudslides, fires, tornadoes and other factors?” Fenn says.
Based on the number of emails he’s received, Fenn estimates about 30,000 people are looking for the chest, but, as far as he knows, nobody has found it yet. Asked whether he hopes the chest is found within his lifetime, Fenn says, “I am ambivalent. When I hid the treasure, its fate left my hands. Now it is for the ages.”
[h=2]A tantalizing treasure[/h]
Mesa Verde, the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings.Credit: ©Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Some of Fenn’s treasure includes a bracelet made of beads collected from Mesa Verde, the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings, where this necklace was also found. Credit: National Park Service.
The contents of Forrest Fenn’s chest are not completely known, but Fenn has listed enough of the treasure to make the hunt truly tantalizing: 20 troy pounds of gold coins, gold nuggets the size of a man’s fist, pre-Columbian Incan and Mayan animal figures, a 17th-century Spanish gold-and-emerald ring, a bracelet with more than 250 rubies, diamonds and Ceylon sapphires, and two hand-carved Chinese jade masks.
The Fenn treasure has been valued between $1 million and $2 million and the chest itself — a 12th-century Roman lockbox made of sculpted bronze — has been said to be worth about $35,000. But perhaps the most valuable trinket in the chest is a modest turquoise and silver bracelet that Fenn has offered to buy back from whomever finds the treasure.
In 1888, on the day the rancher-turned-archaeologist Richard Wetherill discovered Mesa Verde — the stunning cliff dwelling complex in southwest Colorado — he picked up 22 small turquoise beads. He later had the beads fashioned into a bracelet by a Navajo silversmith and wore it for many years before selling it to the entrepreneur Fred Harvey. Fenn later won the bracelet in a game of billiards with one of Harvey’s heirs. “The bracelet fits me perfectly and I wore it many times,” Fenn says. “It is special to me,
Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico antiquities dealer, says the location of his hidden treasure appears on this map, published in his book, “Too Far to Walk,” and that all the clues needed for its discovery are included in this poem, first published in his book, “The Thrill of the Chase.” Credit: Forrest Fenn.By Mary Capterton Morton
“Where warm waters halt… where warm waters halt… where warm waters halt.” For two summers, I’ve been exploring the Rocky Mountains with those words on my mind. Why those four words in particular? Because I believe they lead to a modern-day treasure chest.
In 2010, Forrest Fenn, a retired antiquities dealer based in Santa Fe, N.M., set about creating his own legend: He bought an antique bronze chest and filled it with valuables and artifacts including gold dust, coins and nuggets, Chinese jade carvings, a 17th-century gold-and-emerald ring, an ancient turquoise bracelet — together worth between $1 million and $2 million — and then lugged all 19 kilograms of it to a mysterious hiding place somewhere “in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe.” He then released a poem containing nine clues as to the treasure’s whereabouts. More than four years later, nobody has yet found Fenn’s treasure, and he maintains that if it goes undiscovered, the chest will stay safely in place for hundreds of years.
The Fenn treasure has been valued between $1 million and $2 million and the chest itself — a 12th-century Roman lockbox made of sculpted bronze — has been said to be worth about $35,000. Credit: Forrest Fenn.Thousands of people from all walks of life have gone searching for Fenn’s treasure in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana (Fenn has eliminated Utah and Idaho). When I heard about the treasure, I couldn’t help thinking about it from a geologist’s point of view: The poem implies that the treasure is hidden near water, but the courses of waterways can change drastically over time, even from season to season, let alone over centuries. And as someone interested in archaeology and paleontology, I’m well aware that if you find something interesting on public land, it’s not always “finders, keepers.” I was intrigued. Could I put my background in geology and my hiker’s knowledge of landscapes to work searching for a treasure chest?
[h=3]A Modern-Day Maverick[/h]
In the 1980s, Fenn, an amateur archaeologist, purchased the San Lazaro Pueblo, a prehistoric pueblo site settled about 700 years ago by the Tano tribe. Fenn has spent the last several decades excavating the pueblo, which grew to more than 2,000 rooms before being abandoned roughly 300 years ago. Credit: Forrest Fenn.In some circles, Fenn cuts a notorious figure. As a private collector of Native American artifacts and a highly successful art and antiquities dealer, he has raised the ire of some scholars, curators and archaeologists over the years. But he’s also a local legend in Santa Fe’s art world, a self-proclaimed maverick, whose memoirs detail a lifetime of adventures, from lassoing a wild bison to flying fighter jets in Vietnam and traveling all over the world — Indiana Jones-style — in search of interesting artifacts.
Fenn began collecting at age 9, when he found his first arrowhead in a farmer’s field in Texas. Seven decades later, he still has that arrowhead and calls it his most treasured object in his vast, diverse collection of Native American artifacts, which includes dolls, ceremonial shields and pottery, among other items.
After that inspirational arrowhead, Fenn’s next-most-prized possessions may be Sitting Bull’s peace pipe or, on a larger scale, theSan Lazaro Pueblo: In the mid-1980s, Fenn bought 65 hectares in the Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe that included a prehistoric pueblo site known as San Lazaro. Settled about 700 years ago by the Tano tribe, the pueblo grew to more than 2,000 rooms before being abandoned roughly 300 years ago. Fenn has personally been excavating the site for more than two decades, turning up relics such as ancient gaming pieces, beaded jewelry and human effigies, including a rare plaster mask.
“Fenn has a wonderful collection of Plains and Southwestern material that he has acquired over the last 40 years,” says Clinton Nagy, curator of the Splendid Heritage website, which catalogs private collections such as Fenn’s for educational purposes. “In my opinion, he has done a lot of good in preserving native culture.”
Fenn’s impressive resume and reputation seem to assure seekers that his treasure is no hoax. “I met Forrest many years ago when I lived in Santa Fe and worked in an Indian artifact gallery. He has an impeccable reputation in that world,” says Katya Luce, an avid treasure seeker who moved from Maui back to New Mexico to look for Fenn’s treasure. “Knowing Forrest, I never doubted for a moment whether the treasure was real.”
[h=3]Twenty-Four Lines, Nine Clues[/h]
Fenn estimates that at least 30,000 people have sought his treasure. Chief among them is Dal Neitzel, seen below searching a stream, who runs one of the most active Forrest Fenn treasure blogs. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.Fenn’s poem (see sidebar) contains nine clues that, he says, if followed correctly, will lead to his treasure chest. The poem is short and fairly simple, but contains enough fodder to hide a few potential red herrings. “Forrest is an exceedingly clever fellow. If anybody does ever solve his poem, I’m sure it’ll be full of twists and turns and double meanings,” says Dal Neitzel, who runs one of the most active Forrest Fenn treasure blogs. Fenn suggests that searchers start at the beginning of the poem and follow it linearly. After a few introductory lines, the poem reads: “Begin it where warm waters halt.” In my own experience, flowing water is rarely warm in the mountains, and it never halts. The most obvious interpretations of this clue suggest that it refers to a hot spring, or a dam with a relatively warm lake, although Fenn has said the “treasure is not associated with any manmade structure.”
Fenn is known to enjoy clever wordplay and double meanings. The “blaze” mentioned in the poem may or may not be a trail marker, like this rock etching found along the Rio Grande. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.“Forrest has said that people are thinking about the warm waters clue too hard,” Luce says. “But it’s a tricky one. What defines warm water? And what does it mean to say waters halt? That’s not really the nature of water.”
After the cryptic initial hint, the clues get a little more straightforward: “take it in the canyon down, not far but too far to walk,” which seems to imply a direction and that there is some distance to travel. But the next reference is a head-scratcher: “put in below the home of Brown.” “Put in” is a boating term so “brown” could reference a fishing hole for brown trout. Some people think it references the brown grizzly bears of Yellowstone. Still others scour maps and historical records for any place or person named Brown.
The next lines seem to hint at a difficult journey: “from there it’s no place for the meek, the end is ever drawing nigh; there’ll be no paddle up your creek, just heavy loads and water high.” This again seems to refer to a waterway, perhaps one that requires a boat and a portage. But it might be misleading to think of Fenn’s treasure as necessarily being hidden in some remote, difficult to reach place. After all, an ailing 80-year-old man carried it to the location by himself. He did it in two trips in one afternoon, he has said, carrying the chest in first and then the contents.
“The chest is not in a dangerous place,” he has said. “It’s somewhere you could take your kids.” But he has also said it’s not somewhere that anybody is likely to stumble upon it accidentally. “The person who finds the treasure will have studied the poem over and over, and thought and analyzed and moved with confidence. Nothing about it will be accidental,” Fenn says.
[h=3]On the Ground in Northern New Mexico[/h]
Phillip Mason (left) moved to Taos from northern Nevada two years ago to look for Fenn’s treasure. Some treasure seekers have interpreted “home of Brown” in the poem to refer to trout waters, as Fenn is an avid fisherman. Credit: both: Mary Caperton Morton.Then we moved south to the John Dunn Bridge, which spans the Rio Grande near Arroyo Hondo. The well-known, oft-frequented Manby Hot Springs bubbles just downstream from the bridge. We weren’t the only people on the hunt there; across the river we spotted three hikers using a metal detector to scan the basalt rubble that lines the Rio Grande Gorge.
We went home empty-handed and a little overwhelmed by the potential search area. Even if we were in the right place, the Rio Grande Gorge is immense, with countless pockets in the basalt walls for stashing a small bronze box. Even if we were in the right place, the chest could be anywhere in that landscape. “When I first started searching, I thought I knew for sure where it was, but the more I look, the further it seems I am from it,” Luce says.
The author and a friend searched near Manby Hot Springs in the Rio Grande Gorge near Taos, N.M. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.I told Mason I was working on a story about the Fenn treasure and he agreed to take me along on an expedition. When we met in downtown Taos, he asked, quite seriously: “If we find that chest today, how are we going to split it?” I told him he could have everything, but I wanted the turquoise bracelet, for which Fenn has offered a bounty (see sidebar). “You’ve done your homework,” Mason said approvingly.
Mason believes the quest begins at Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in New Mexico. “Forrest mentions a Taos Mountain in his book several times,” Mason says. “There’s no Taos Mountain on the map, but that’s one of the nicknames for Wheeler.” So we headed up the road to the Taos ski resort and parked at a few pullouts along the road to bushwhack upslope to some interesting landmarks that Mason thinks might line up with some of the clues.
Some treasure hunters believe the quest begins at Wheeler Peak, the highest mountain in New Mexico. Taos Ski Valley is in the distance. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.[h=3]Finders, Keepers?[/h]According to Fenn, the treasure could be hidden in one of three places: “public land, tribal land or private property. It is not my intention to make a statement that will narrow the search area.” Most tribal lands are off-limits to outsiders, making places such as the backcountry wilderness around Blue Lake, held sacred by the Taos Pueblo in northern New Mexico, an unlikely place for a treasure hunt.
Private land is a possibility, if it were unposted and accessed through public land. But Fenn is not known to own land other than San Lazaro, and he maintains that he hasn’t shared the location of the chest with anybody else, making it unlikely that he got permission from a private landowner to stash his treasure on their property. So that leaves public land as the most likely category.
The United States has more than 2 million square kilometers of public land managed by BLM, the National Park Service and the Forest Service. Most public land is open for recreational use, but the types of recreation permitted vary widely. In some places, like the BLM’s Wild Rivers Recreation Area in northern New Mexico, collecting rocks on the surface is permitted, while in national parks, toting off a piece of obsidian can result in a hefty fine.
One of the main legal distinctions hinges on whether the chest is buried; Fenn has hinted that it’s not. “On BLM land in New Mexico, as long as it’s not buried, if somebody found the chest, they would be permitted to take it,” says Allison Sandoval, a BLM representative in Santa Fe. Sandoval is quick to point out that artifacts such as arrowheads and pottery found on BLM land are not “finders, keepers,” however. “Fenn’s treasure isn’t an artifact. It’s kind of a unique situation, but as long as there’s no degradation of the land involved in collecting it, it’s fair game.”
Yellowstone National Park is a hot bed for searchers due to Fenn’s boyhood adventures in the park and around Hebgen Lake and West Yellowstone, but the National Park Service has an entirely different stance on collecting.
“Treasure hunting is not illegal in Yellowstone, but there’s a whole host of regulations that govern the preservation and use of national parks,” says Tim Reid, chief ranger at Yellowstone. “Metal detectors are illegal, digging is illegal, and you can’t remove any natural or cultural feature from the park.” If somebody were to find the Fenn treasure within the boundaries of Yellowstone, or any national park, it would be considered abandoned property, Reid says. “It’s not ‘finders, keepers.’ You would have to turn it in and go through a governmental procedure to lay claim to it.”
The treasure could be on public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service or the Forest Service, which raises questions about its ownership if found. Credit: Mary Caperton Morton.Land-use regulations may seem to narrow the search field, but as Neitzel points out, Fenn hid the treasure without anybody seeing him do it, so somebody should be able to get the chest without getting caught by authorities. “The poem says ‘take the chest and go in peace,’ which may imply that a searcher shouldn’t make a fuss about where it was found,” Mason says.
“Forrest has said that there was nowhere he could have hid the treasure that would not involve some potential complications,” Mason says. “Maybe the answer is to take it clear of its hiding place and keep quiet about it.”
The Forest Service does not agree with that strategy, however. “If somebody were to find the chest and not report it, that’s theft of government property,” says Mike Bremer, a forest service archaeologist with the Santa Fe National Forest. “Frankly, I think this whole treasure hunt is a nuisance and a potential danger to the vast reserves of cultural artifacts and archaeology in Santa Fe National Forest.”
[h=3]A Quest for the Ages[/h]In the past four years, Fenn has issued a few additional hints about the location of his treasure, but he’s not giving it away: The chest is above 1,500 meters of elevation; it’s not associated with any manmade structure; and it’s not buried in a graveyard.
Curious about the long-term fate of both the chest and the quest, I asked Fenn whether the clues in the poem will also withstand the test of time. “I am guessing the clues will stand for centuries. That was one of my basic premises, but the treasure chest will fall victim to geological phenomena just like everything else. Who can predict earthquakes, floods, mudslides, fires, tornadoes and other factors?” Fenn says.
Based on the number of emails he’s received, Fenn estimates about 30,000 people are looking for the chest, but, as far as he knows, nobody has found it yet. Asked whether he hopes the chest is found within his lifetime, Fenn says, “I am ambivalent. When I hid the treasure, its fate left my hands. Now it is for the ages.”
[h=2]A tantalizing treasure[/h]
Mesa Verde, the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings.Credit: ©Andreas F. Borchert, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Some of Fenn’s treasure includes a bracelet made of beads collected from Mesa Verde, the ancient Anasazi cliff dwellings, where this necklace was also found. Credit: National Park Service.The contents of Forrest Fenn’s chest are not completely known, but Fenn has listed enough of the treasure to make the hunt truly tantalizing: 20 troy pounds of gold coins, gold nuggets the size of a man’s fist, pre-Columbian Incan and Mayan animal figures, a 17th-century Spanish gold-and-emerald ring, a bracelet with more than 250 rubies, diamonds and Ceylon sapphires, and two hand-carved Chinese jade masks.
The Fenn treasure has been valued between $1 million and $2 million and the chest itself — a 12th-century Roman lockbox made of sculpted bronze — has been said to be worth about $35,000. But perhaps the most valuable trinket in the chest is a modest turquoise and silver bracelet that Fenn has offered to buy back from whomever finds the treasure.
In 1888, on the day the rancher-turned-archaeologist Richard Wetherill discovered Mesa Verde — the stunning cliff dwelling complex in southwest Colorado — he picked up 22 small turquoise beads. He later had the beads fashioned into a bracelet by a Navajo silversmith and wore it for many years before selling it to the entrepreneur Fred Harvey. Fenn later won the bracelet in a game of billiards with one of Harvey’s heirs. “The bracelet fits me perfectly and I wore it many times,” Fenn says. “It is special to me,
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By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press<time data-always-show="true" datetime="2016-01-29T23:49:00.000Z" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; font-size: 1.1rem; line-height: 1.364; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">14 hrs ago</time>
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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An antiquities dealer who inspired tens of thousands to search the Rocky Mountains for $2 million in hidden treasure now leads an increasingly desperate mission to find one of his fans.Forrest Fenn has been flying out in chartered helicopters or planes, searching remote stretches of the upper Rio Grande for any sign of Randy Bilyeu, now missing in the wild for more than three frigid weeks. Fellow treasure hunters also are searching for Bilyeu, who was last seen on Jan. 5 while trying to solve Fenn's mystery.
"Every time we go out and don't find Randy it's discouraging but we're not going to give up," Fenn told The Associated Press. "There are still places out there that I want to look."
Fenn, an eccentric 85-year-old from Santa Fe, has inspired a cult following since his announcement several years ago that he stashed a small bronze chest containing nearly $2 million in of gold, jewelry and artifacts somewhere in the Rockies. He dropped clues to its whereabouts in a cryptic poem in his self-published memoir, "The Thrill of the Chase."
The hidden treasure has inspired thousands to search in vain through remote corners of New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere in the mountains. Treasure hunters share their experiences on blogs and brainstorm about the clues. The mystery has been featured by national media, igniting even more interest.
Fenn gets about 120 emails a day from people looking for his 40-pound box, and believes 65,000 people have searched for the stash, some using family vacations to venture into the woods.
"The hope of finding the treasure is one thing, of course, but there's a sense of adventure when you get out in the mountains and in the sunshine and the fresh air," Fenn explained. "One of my motives was to get the kids off the couch and away from the game machine."
But the search can be risky: Some have forded swollen creeks in Yellowstone and were rescued by rangers. A Texas woman spent a worrisome night in the New Mexico woods after being caught in the dark. Others have been cited for digging on public land, and federal managers have warned treasure hunters not to damage archaeological or biological resources.
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© Provided by Associated Press Thousands have set off into the wilds of the West in search for Forrest Fenn’s cache of gold, jewelry and artifacts. But until now, none of the treasure hunters has been in such a…No "Fenner" has been in a more dangerous a predicament than Bilyeu, a 54-year-old grandfather who moved to Colorado two years ago to follow this dream.
Family and friends say he bought a raft and set out on Jan. 5 after scouting for two weeks along the river west of Santa Fe. He had a GPS device, a wetsuit and waders, and brought along his little white dog, Leo.
More than a week passed before a worried friend reached out to his ex-wife in Florida, Linda Bilyeu, who filed a missing person's report on Jan. 14. His raft and dog were found the next day.
Bilyeu left maps with markings in his car that fellow treasure hunters are using to narrow their search. He also left a sandwich, suggesting that he hadn't planned to be gone long.
The New Mexico Search and Rescue team and state police scanned canyons and mesas along the river by air and on foot, even bringing in dogs to sniff for clues, but suspended their efforts after several days.
"Unfortunately, we just don't have anything to go on right now," State Police spokeswoman Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo said. "If someone were to find clothing or footprints or just something that might be indicative of the hiker, then we would have an area to go to. But we just have not found that yet."
The treasure hunters — led by Fenn — have not given up.
"We know that Randy studied this area very well. He even noted that certain areas were dangerous when the weather was bad and he had done quite a bit of research," said Sacha Johnston, a treasure hunter helping to coordinate searches. "He wasn't just randomly kayaking down the Rio Grande one day. He knew where he was going. He had a plan."
Fenn never meant for his treasure hunt to be easy: His poem points searchers to somewhere beyond "where warm waters halt ... in the canyon down ... too far to walk ... below the home of Brown."
Getting out would be dicey as well, he wrote: "... from there it's no place for the meek/The end is ever drawing nigh/There'll be no paddle up your creek/Just heavy loads and water high."
This was all supposed to be fun, of course. Now the search for Bilyeu is taking an emotional and physical toll on Fenn, who spends his days organizing, hiring aircraft, and worrying.
His fans stand ready to admonish anyone who dares blame Fenn for Bilyeu's disappearance, saying they're all responsible adults.
Fenn, for his part, has issued plenty of warnings, along with more clues. Among them: He says there's no point to searching in winter, when snow would hide the treasure. He also said "the treasure is hidden higher than 5,000 feet above sea level," but it isn't buried, nor in a graveyard, "nor associated with any structure."
And he has no plans to reveal its location.
"There have been too many people looking," Fenn said. "It would not be fair to them if we shut the thing down."
___
Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM
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By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press<time data-always-show="true" datetime="2016-01-29T23:49:00.000Z" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; font-size: 1.1rem; line-height: 1.364; color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">14 hrs ago</time>
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[h=4]David Bowie asked for his ashes to be scattered in Bali[/h]
[h=4]‘Growing Pains’ Star: ‘I Began Drinking at 4’[/h]<article itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/NewsArticle" class="articlecontent" data-aop="article" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 624px;"><section class="articlebody" itemprop="articleBody" data-aop="articlebody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 4rem; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.8rem; line-height: 1.444; transition: max-height 1s ease-in; -webkit-transition: max-height 1s ease-in; max-height: 100%; position: relative;"><video id="video_player_ada98f1d-6b19-450b-a2a9-0fe5fab2ba76_element" preload="metadata" title="Treasure Hunter Missing" src="http://prod.streaming.video.msn.com/742937c1-0a25-41b9-9cf9-b25715f4b876/6aa22ec3-13c2-42ec-92e5-bbbab4f9243b.ism/manifest(format=m3u8-aapl)" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; visibility: visible; height: 351px; max-height: 100%; width: 624px; position: absolute; left: 0px; top: 0px;"></video>
<object name="hpobj1700" class="vxFlashPlayer" id="hpobj1700" classid="clsid
27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/swflash.cab" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; visibility: visible; height: 351px; max-height: 100%; width: 624px;"><embed name="hpembed2073" class="vxFlashPlayer" id="hpembed2073" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer" src="http://static-news-eus.s-msn.com/en-us/news/_h/9b01a379/webcore/flash/hybridplayer_2.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" base="." wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" flashvars="loadAdsOnLoad=false&playerId=video_player_ada98f1d-6b19-450b-a2a9-0fe5fab2ba76" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; display: block; visibility: visible; height: 351px; max-height: 100%; width: 624px;"></object>ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — An antiquities dealer who inspired tens of thousands to search the Rocky Mountains for $2 million in hidden treasure now leads an increasingly desperate mission to find one of his fans.Forrest Fenn has been flying out in chartered helicopters or planes, searching remote stretches of the upper Rio Grande for any sign of Randy Bilyeu, now missing in the wild for more than three frigid weeks. Fellow treasure hunters also are searching for Bilyeu, who was last seen on Jan. 5 while trying to solve Fenn's mystery.
"Every time we go out and don't find Randy it's discouraging but we're not going to give up," Fenn told The Associated Press. "There are still places out there that I want to look."
Fenn, an eccentric 85-year-old from Santa Fe, has inspired a cult following since his announcement several years ago that he stashed a small bronze chest containing nearly $2 million in of gold, jewelry and artifacts somewhere in the Rockies. He dropped clues to its whereabouts in a cryptic poem in his self-published memoir, "The Thrill of the Chase."
The hidden treasure has inspired thousands to search in vain through remote corners of New Mexico, Yellowstone National Park and elsewhere in the mountains. Treasure hunters share their experiences on blogs and brainstorm about the clues. The mystery has been featured by national media, igniting even more interest.
Fenn gets about 120 emails a day from people looking for his 40-pound box, and believes 65,000 people have searched for the stash, some using family vacations to venture into the woods.
"The hope of finding the treasure is one thing, of course, but there's a sense of adventure when you get out in the mountains and in the sunshine and the fresh air," Fenn explained. "One of my motives was to get the kids off the couch and away from the game machine."
But the search can be risky: Some have forded swollen creeks in Yellowstone and were rescued by rangers. A Texas woman spent a worrisome night in the New Mexico woods after being caught in the dark. Others have been cited for digging on public land, and federal managers have warned treasure hunters not to damage archaeological or biological resources.
Family and friends say he bought a raft and set out on Jan. 5 after scouting for two weeks along the river west of Santa Fe. He had a GPS device, a wetsuit and waders, and brought along his little white dog, Leo.
More than a week passed before a worried friend reached out to his ex-wife in Florida, Linda Bilyeu, who filed a missing person's report on Jan. 14. His raft and dog were found the next day.
Bilyeu left maps with markings in his car that fellow treasure hunters are using to narrow their search. He also left a sandwich, suggesting that he hadn't planned to be gone long.
The New Mexico Search and Rescue team and state police scanned canyons and mesas along the river by air and on foot, even bringing in dogs to sniff for clues, but suspended their efforts after several days.
"Unfortunately, we just don't have anything to go on right now," State Police spokeswoman Sgt. Elizabeth Armijo said. "If someone were to find clothing or footprints or just something that might be indicative of the hiker, then we would have an area to go to. But we just have not found that yet."
The treasure hunters — led by Fenn — have not given up.
"We know that Randy studied this area very well. He even noted that certain areas were dangerous when the weather was bad and he had done quite a bit of research," said Sacha Johnston, a treasure hunter helping to coordinate searches. "He wasn't just randomly kayaking down the Rio Grande one day. He knew where he was going. He had a plan."
Fenn never meant for his treasure hunt to be easy: His poem points searchers to somewhere beyond "where warm waters halt ... in the canyon down ... too far to walk ... below the home of Brown."
Getting out would be dicey as well, he wrote: "... from there it's no place for the meek/The end is ever drawing nigh/There'll be no paddle up your creek/Just heavy loads and water high."
This was all supposed to be fun, of course. Now the search for Bilyeu is taking an emotional and physical toll on Fenn, who spends his days organizing, hiring aircraft, and worrying.
His fans stand ready to admonish anyone who dares blame Fenn for Bilyeu's disappearance, saying they're all responsible adults.
Fenn, for his part, has issued plenty of warnings, along with more clues. Among them: He says there's no point to searching in winter, when snow would hide the treasure. He also said "the treasure is hidden higher than 5,000 feet above sea level," but it isn't buried, nor in a graveyard, "nor associated with any structure."
And he has no plans to reveal its location.
"There have been too many people looking," Fenn said. "It would not be fair to them if we shut the thing down."
___
Follow Susan Montoya Bryan on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanmbryanNM
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[h=4]Inside the Navy's $4.4B destroyer[/h]
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[h=4]Clinton: Trump supporters ‘basket of deplorables'[/h]
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© Provided by Quartz The Rio Grande river gorge in New Mexico.When Randy Bilyeu disappeared, he was hunting for the Fenn Treasure, a chest allegedly filled with gold, precious stones, and jewelry, supposedly hidden in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In 2010, millionaire art dealer (and Former Vietnam fighter pilot) 79-year-old Forrest Fenn filled a bronze chest with rare metals, jewels, and artifacts, and then hid it in the mountains. Later that year, he published his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase, which included a 24-line poem that he says contains the clues necessary to track down the treasure chest. Since then, he’s become something of a global celebrity; in 2013, he appeared on NBC’sToday Show to issue some new clues about the place where the chest had been hidden. Bilyeu happened to catch the episode on TV and became obsessed with finding the Fenn treasure—against all odds and his friends and family’s better judgement.
Soon after New Years Eve 2016, Bilyeu arrived in Santa Fe, a city that hosts “Fennboree” camping weekends every year, and where $100 will buy a map signed personally by Forrest Fenn. On Jan. 3, Bilyeu checked out of his motel and bought an inflatable raft. On Jan. 5, he went out into the mountains, leaving a message with a friend that he’d be back tomorrow. But he didn’t, and after a week and a half of unsuccessfully trying to contact Bilyeu by phone, his ex-wife Linda called the cops.
The next day, local police found his raft and starving terrier named Leo. But there was no trace of Bilyeu. A few weeks worth of search-and-rescue missions also came to nothing. Linda Bilyeu didn’t give up though and organized a group of volunteers to keep the search up. One of them was Jerry Snyder, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration special agent and founder of the Find Me Group, a nonprofit organization based in Chandler, Arizona, offering professional help in finding missing people.
“Since 2002 we’ve had over 400 such cases. Find Me relies heavily on volunteers, so I’ve been thinking about the way to use their time as efficiently as possible,” says Snyder. “I came up with the idea of an artificially intelligent system that could be fed with all the evidence we’ve gathered on a particular case and which would give us some approximated location of the person in question on that basis. Sadly, I was no computer genius.”
So Snyder contacted the nearby Arizona State University and eventually got in touch with Paulo Shakarian, an assistant professor and head of the Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Laboratory there. Shakarian, a West Point graduate, specializes in a technique called “geospatial abduction.”
Essentially, it’s an artificial intelligence system that figures out the current location of someone (or thing) using a data set of known previous locations. For example, geospatial abduction can pinpoint the location of a bear’s cave using the coordinates of animal’s droppings, or a serial killer’s address using the coordinates of known killings. Serial killers usually attack within six miles from their home, and bears will stay within the same distance of their cave when they go out on their daily hunts or bathroom trips. Shakarian has designed algorithms that take information like that into account, ingest data points, and, after ruling out obviously impossible locations like lakes, rivers and so on, come up with the most feasible solution to current whereabouts. As with most algorithms of this sort, the more data—the more killings or droppings—the more likely for the solution to be correct.
The technology proved its worth in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. An AI system that Shakarian co-designed with scientists from the University of Maryland (called called SCARE-S2, for Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine System 2), was able to locate insurgent leaders and their major supply depots.
Now, Shakarian began adapting SCARE-S2 into something he was calling MIST, for Missing Person Intelligence Synthesis Toolkit. The idea, he says, “was to pull the same trick off with finding missing people.”
Input coordinates are pretty clear when it comes to tracking down bears, serial killers, and even insurgents. But in the Bilyeu case, there were no certain data points. Instead, Shakarian and Snyder brought in around 20 experts to make educated guesses as to Bilyeu’s current location. Then they fed those coordinates into the algorithm.
But there was one other problem: in the world of mysterious disappearances and hidden treasures, “experts” are often eccentric. “We use the expertise of retired law enforcement and skilled search and rescue professionals, even the talents of hyper-intuitive individuals, trying not to miss anything that could be a valuable contribution,” says Snyder. By “hyper-intuitive individuals” he means psychics, mediums, and one man who describes himself as a “certified forensic astrologist.” Snyder insisted that MIST take their input into account, so Shakarian and his computer scientist students had to find a reasonable way of dealing with this. Their idea was beautifully simple.
Modern AI systems are often trained rather than programmed. In other words, they learn from examples and not rules. MIST was no different: they took 24 closed missing persons cases from Find Me’s files, and fed them to their AI software. Then, the AI “compared coordinates provided by each expert with coordinates of the location where a missing person was actually found,” says Shakarian. “On that basis MIST ascribed a weight to each expert’s input.”
Thus, when the AI was deployed on the Bilyeu case, it already knew its way around the Snyder’s team—whose guesses were likely to be pretty accurate and whose needed to be taken with a grain (or two) of salt, and how best to weigh outliers against team agreement on specific data points. Using that information, the AI took the experts’ estimates, and spit out what it believed to be Bilyeu’s whereabouts. Towards the end of July 2016, they passed MIST’s coordinate guesses on to the police in Santa Fe.
A few days later, an engineer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers stumbled on Bilyeu’s remains, on bank of the Rio Grande river, under a thick tanglement of branches and covered with leaves. The location matched MIST predictions—and in fact, the area had been searched more than once before, but because of all vegetation, the body had been missed to that point. Sadly, no AI in the world can pinpoint the exact heap of leaves that in such case needs to be turned. Nevertheless—and despite the fact that 24 cases was a relatively small set of data to use to teach the AI—the finding was encouraging: “At the end of the day MIST has passed its real world test with flying colors,” Snyder says.
Now, the team wants to tweak MIST so that it could work in homicide and human trafficking cases as well. Snyder has already approached several law enforcement agencies in the US and INTERPOL in Europe for access to their databases. But even if those projects don’t get off the ground, MIST could have a huge impact: 4,000 people go missing in the US every day. According to the research published by Shakarian and Snyder, a team using MIST can find a missing person average two days faster than a team without it. “The sooner we find them, the more likely we find them unharmed and alive,” says Snyde
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[h=4]Inside the Navy's $4.4B destroyer[/h]
[h=4]Clinton: Trump supporters ‘basket of deplorables'[/h]<article itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/NewsArticle" class="articlecontent loaded" data-aop="article" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; width: 728px;"><section class="articlebody" itemprop="articleBody" data-aop="articlebody" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 4rem; padding: 0px; font-size: 1.8rem; line-height: 1.444; transition: max-height 1s ease-in; max-height: 100%; position: relative;">
In 2010, millionaire art dealer (and Former Vietnam fighter pilot) 79-year-old Forrest Fenn filled a bronze chest with rare metals, jewels, and artifacts, and then hid it in the mountains. Later that year, he published his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase, which included a 24-line poem that he says contains the clues necessary to track down the treasure chest. Since then, he’s become something of a global celebrity; in 2013, he appeared on NBC’sToday Show to issue some new clues about the place where the chest had been hidden. Bilyeu happened to catch the episode on TV and became obsessed with finding the Fenn treasure—against all odds and his friends and family’s better judgement.
Soon after New Years Eve 2016, Bilyeu arrived in Santa Fe, a city that hosts “Fennboree” camping weekends every year, and where $100 will buy a map signed personally by Forrest Fenn. On Jan. 3, Bilyeu checked out of his motel and bought an inflatable raft. On Jan. 5, he went out into the mountains, leaving a message with a friend that he’d be back tomorrow. But he didn’t, and after a week and a half of unsuccessfully trying to contact Bilyeu by phone, his ex-wife Linda called the cops.
The next day, local police found his raft and starving terrier named Leo. But there was no trace of Bilyeu. A few weeks worth of search-and-rescue missions also came to nothing. Linda Bilyeu didn’t give up though and organized a group of volunteers to keep the search up. One of them was Jerry Snyder, a retired Drug Enforcement Administration special agent and founder of the Find Me Group, a nonprofit organization based in Chandler, Arizona, offering professional help in finding missing people.
“Since 2002 we’ve had over 400 such cases. Find Me relies heavily on volunteers, so I’ve been thinking about the way to use their time as efficiently as possible,” says Snyder. “I came up with the idea of an artificially intelligent system that could be fed with all the evidence we’ve gathered on a particular case and which would give us some approximated location of the person in question on that basis. Sadly, I was no computer genius.”
So Snyder contacted the nearby Arizona State University and eventually got in touch with Paulo Shakarian, an assistant professor and head of the Cyber-Socio Intelligent Systems Laboratory there. Shakarian, a West Point graduate, specializes in a technique called “geospatial abduction.”
Essentially, it’s an artificial intelligence system that figures out the current location of someone (or thing) using a data set of known previous locations. For example, geospatial abduction can pinpoint the location of a bear’s cave using the coordinates of animal’s droppings, or a serial killer’s address using the coordinates of known killings. Serial killers usually attack within six miles from their home, and bears will stay within the same distance of their cave when they go out on their daily hunts or bathroom trips. Shakarian has designed algorithms that take information like that into account, ingest data points, and, after ruling out obviously impossible locations like lakes, rivers and so on, come up with the most feasible solution to current whereabouts. As with most algorithms of this sort, the more data—the more killings or droppings—the more likely for the solution to be correct.
The technology proved its worth in counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. An AI system that Shakarian co-designed with scientists from the University of Maryland (called called SCARE-S2, for Spatio-Cultural Abductive Reasoning Engine System 2), was able to locate insurgent leaders and their major supply depots.
Now, Shakarian began adapting SCARE-S2 into something he was calling MIST, for Missing Person Intelligence Synthesis Toolkit. The idea, he says, “was to pull the same trick off with finding missing people.”
Input coordinates are pretty clear when it comes to tracking down bears, serial killers, and even insurgents. But in the Bilyeu case, there were no certain data points. Instead, Shakarian and Snyder brought in around 20 experts to make educated guesses as to Bilyeu’s current location. Then they fed those coordinates into the algorithm.
But there was one other problem: in the world of mysterious disappearances and hidden treasures, “experts” are often eccentric. “We use the expertise of retired law enforcement and skilled search and rescue professionals, even the talents of hyper-intuitive individuals, trying not to miss anything that could be a valuable contribution,” says Snyder. By “hyper-intuitive individuals” he means psychics, mediums, and one man who describes himself as a “certified forensic astrologist.” Snyder insisted that MIST take their input into account, so Shakarian and his computer scientist students had to find a reasonable way of dealing with this. Their idea was beautifully simple.
Modern AI systems are often trained rather than programmed. In other words, they learn from examples and not rules. MIST was no different: they took 24 closed missing persons cases from Find Me’s files, and fed them to their AI software. Then, the AI “compared coordinates provided by each expert with coordinates of the location where a missing person was actually found,” says Shakarian. “On that basis MIST ascribed a weight to each expert’s input.”
Thus, when the AI was deployed on the Bilyeu case, it already knew its way around the Snyder’s team—whose guesses were likely to be pretty accurate and whose needed to be taken with a grain (or two) of salt, and how best to weigh outliers against team agreement on specific data points. Using that information, the AI took the experts’ estimates, and spit out what it believed to be Bilyeu’s whereabouts. Towards the end of July 2016, they passed MIST’s coordinate guesses on to the police in Santa Fe.
A few days later, an engineer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers stumbled on Bilyeu’s remains, on bank of the Rio Grande river, under a thick tanglement of branches and covered with leaves. The location matched MIST predictions—and in fact, the area had been searched more than once before, but because of all vegetation, the body had been missed to that point. Sadly, no AI in the world can pinpoint the exact heap of leaves that in such case needs to be turned. Nevertheless—and despite the fact that 24 cases was a relatively small set of data to use to teach the AI—the finding was encouraging: “At the end of the day MIST has passed its real world test with flying colors,” Snyder says.
Now, the team wants to tweak MIST so that it could work in homicide and human trafficking cases as well. Snyder has already approached several law enforcement agencies in the US and INTERPOL in Europe for access to their databases. But even if those projects don’t get off the ground, MIST could have a huge impact: 4,000 people go missing in the US every day. According to the research published by Shakarian and Snyder, a team using MIST can find a missing person average two days faster than a team without it. “The sooner we find them, the more likely we find them unharmed and alive,” says Snyde
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The Intrepid Treasure Hunter Who Found Forrest Fenn's Buried Fortune Reveals His Identity—and What He Plans to Do With It
Jonathan "Jack" Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student from Michigan, has come forward as the finder of Forrest Fenn's fabled hidden treasure.
news.artnet.com
treasure found sorry was not me and really forgot bout this
Yeah , I'd heard the treasure was found , more than a few people lost their life looking for it ? ? ?The Intrepid Treasure Hunter Who Found Forrest Fenn's Buried Fortune Reveals His Identity—and What He Plans to Do With It
Jonathan "Jack" Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student from Michigan, has come forward as the finder of Forrest Fenn's fabled hidden treasure.
treasure found sorry was not me and really forgot bout this
