The Treasure Hunt That Captivated the World

juin 26, 2025

View in Browser

Thursday, June 26, 2025

What's more exciting than the idea of buried treasure? An octogenarian Santa Fe art dealer named Forrest Fenn tapped into that feeling back in 2010 and sparked a global mania when he revealed that he'd hidden a chest filled with gold somewhere in the American West. Soon, treasure hunters from around the world were crisscrossing the Rockies to try to find it, including our writer, Porochista Khakpour. Over the years, she got to know the complicated man behind the treasure saga—even as the story began to take on new, and sometimes tragic, dimensions. It's a tale full of twists and it's not over yet.

—Brian O'Keefe, executive editor

Plus:

The Wild West Treasure Hunt That Has Obsessed the World for More Than a Decade

An art dealer in Santa Fe named Forrest Fenn sparked a global mania to find a chest filled with gold he buried in the Rockies. That was just the beginning of the story.

What is more American than searching for buried treasure? That was the last text I sent to a friend of mine before my cell-phone reception dropped out in a desolate corner of Yellowstone National Park. It was 2013 and I was just a few months into reporting a story that would alternately fascinate me, frustrate me, and draw me back in again for more than a decade. Like many thousands of others around the world, I would become enthralled by the mystery of the Fenn Treasure and intrigued by the man behind it. Unlike most, I'd get to know him personally in the years ahead.

READ THE STORY

We used to build roads and bridges in other countries. Trump wants prisons instead. Charles P. Pierce criticizes the Trump Administration's plan for deportees. >>
Alongside interviews with Olympic gymnast Suni Lee on the 2025 NBA Draft red carpet, Esquire took portraits of twenty-four of the thirty first-round picks on Wednesday night. Josh Rosenberg met the 2025 NBA Draft Class. >>

One Man on Why He Cheats

I'll tell you why I cheat.

I need to. Infidelity makes me remember things. The details that expand to fill my life (my upcoming performance reviews, the aches and pains of training, the recovery of my 401(k)) and the ones that deaden it (my guilt, my smug self-satisfaction, my fake epiphanies about my progress in this life)—all of that drops away when I look down at the naked spine of an unfamiliar woman, twisting slightly in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming onto the sheets of a Hampton Inn in some nameless suburb. This is the most absolute choice I can make. I am there on my own. Against every code, rule, and set of mores I pretend to obey. Against better judgment, against every lesson of hindsight and every shard of wisdom that comes with age, I have no regrets in that moment, because I am naked, or without pants, and I have chosen to be there. I have voted by my presence, declared it, and I feel the blood moving in me again. So it's the blood. That's who I am. That's why men cheat.

By Anonymous

The Secrets to Dressing Well in Your 40s

The 40s are a consequential decade for a man. If you're lucky, your life is only half finished. The previous decades were prologue. You've earned a measure of gravitas, but these are the years when everything really starts to matter—your job, your family, your health. This is the age at which people will always remember you, as if frozen in amber. So you'd better look your best.

How you dress in your 40s should reflect both your years of experience as well as the fact that you're not old. Yes, it's a curious place to be. Some men give up on style around this time; others continue dressing as if they haven't aged. Don't do either of those things.

By Charlie Teasdale