For a decade the treasure chest filled with gold, rubies, emeralds and diamonds hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains lay unclaimed.
Tens of thousands searched for the riches. The quest led to lawsuits and even deaths, with some losing their lives as they looked.
But the man who hid the jewels and left clues for their discovery, 89-year-old Forrest Fenn, has announced that the chase is now over. The chest has been found.
“It was under a canopy of stars in the lush, forested vegetation of the Rocky Mountains and had not moved from the spot where I hid it more than 10 years ago,” Mr Fenn said as the news was announced on Sunday.
“I do not know the person who found it, but the poem in my book led him to the precise spot.”
Mr Fenn, an author and artifacts dealer who lives in the New Mexico city of Santa Fe, had hidden the spoils, worth an estimated $1 million, at an undisclosed location.
He had included clues about where they could be found in a 24-line poem published in his 2010 autobiography The Thrill of the Chase.
The search for the treasure had made headlines as America struggled with the impacts of recession and echoed the stories of frontiersmen in the country's past who went West seeking their fortune.
An estimated 350,000 people from all over the world went hunting for the treasure, according to US media reports, though the true scale of interest is hard to verify.
The New Mexican, a newspaper in Santa Fe, said at least five people had died searching for the chest and spoke to the author about the discovery.
Mr Fenn told the paper that the chest had been found “a few days ago” but would not say where the treasure was located or who discovered it.
“The guy who found it does not want his name mentioned. He’s from back East,” said Mr Fenn, who said a photograph provided proved the discovery had been made.
Mr Finn announced the news on his website, declaring “the search is over” but urging others to continue to look for unknown treasures that could still be unclaimed in the mountains.
He said: “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.”
