98 Fun Facts About Treasure Hunts

What year was the treasure hidden by art dealer Forrest Fenn finally found?

After a decade-long search, the treasure chest hidden by eccentric art dealer Forrest Fenn was found in June 2020.

Who wrote the classic adventure novel 'Treasure Island'?

"Treasure Island," an adventure novel about buccaneers and buried gold, was written by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson.

Under what name did Blackbeard's future Queen Anne's Revenge sail for the French?

It was La Concorde, a French slave ship Blackbeard captured near Martinique in November 1717 and renamed Queen Anne's Revenge; he ran it aground off North Carolina in 1718 and the wreck was found in 1996.

What outdoor activity involves using a GPS receiver or mobile device to find hidden containers?

Geocaching hides containers, called geocaches, at coordinates published online for others to find with a GPS receiver or phone.

What famous Spanish galleon, sunk in 1622, was discovered off the Florida Keys in 1985 by Mel Fisher?

The Nuestra Señora de Atocha, a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, sank in a hurricane in 1622 and was famously found by treasure hunter Mel Fisher in 1985.

Which spot off Nova Scotia has drawn treasure hunters for over two centuries with tales of a 'Money Pit'?

Oak Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, has been the focus of treasure hunters for over two centuries, with legends of a 'Money Pit' containing vast riches or historical artifacts.

In the 1985 film The Goonies, what legendary pirate's treasure are the children searching for?

One-Eyed Willy's map turns up in the Walshes' attic alongside a 1632 doubloon.

The legendary lost city of gold, El Dorado, was believed to be located in which continent?

South America's Muisca, skilled goldsmiths of the Andean highlands, began the legend, which swelled into a whole city of gold; their golden raft now sits in Bogotá's Museo del Oro.

What was the common name for the Spanish silver dollar coin linked to pirate treasure?

The Spanish eight-real silver coin was widely known as a 'piece of eight' and became an iconic symbol of pirate lore and buried treasure.

In which German mine did US troops find the Reichsbank's gold reserve in April 1945?

Merkers: on 7 April 1945 soldiers of the US 90th Infantry Division entered the Kaiseroda salt mine at Merkers, Thuringia, and found more than 8,000 gold bars, sacks of currency and crates of looted art.

What navigational instrument measures the angular distance between two objects, often the horizon and a celestial body?

A sextant is a navigational instrument that uses reflecting mirrors to measure the angle between an astronomical object and the horizon for celestial navigation.

What map feature shows the cardinal directions and their intermediate points, often drawn as a star?

The compass rose, also called a wind rose, shows north, east, south and west and the points between in a star-like pattern.

In which US state was the first documented GPS-located cache, a bucket of beans and a slingshot, hidden in May 2000?

Oregon: the first bucket was hidden near Beavercreek, Oregon, on 3 May 2000, the day after the US switched off GPS 'selective availability' and made civilian receivers accurate enough to locate a small container.

Well-digging farmers in 1974 uncovered the Terracotta Army guarding which emperor's tomb?

Qin Shi Huang, China's first emperor, was buried near Xi'an in 210 BC; farmers digging a well in March 1974 struck the clay soldiers of the Terracotta Army that guard his mausoleum, estimated at some 8,000 figures.

What is an armed private ship licensed by a government to attack enemy shipping called?

A privateer was a private person or vessel engaged in commerce raiding under a commission of war, often referred to as a letter of marque.

What is the general term for goods or valuables taken by force, especially during war or robbery?

Plunder, booty, loot, spoils and pillage all name the proceeds of looting.

Which outdoor hobby mixes orienteering, art and puzzle solving, often using rubber stamps?

Letterboxing is an outdoor hobby that involves hiding small, weatherproof boxes containing a notebook and a rubber stamp, with clues leading to their discovery.

Which three encrypted texts supposedly locate treasure buried in Bedford County, Virginia, around 1820?

The Beale Ciphers are a set of three encrypted texts that purportedly reveal the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver, and jewels in Bedford County, Virginia.

What iconic phrase, often depicted on treasure maps, signifies the location of hidden riches?

'X marks the spot' was popularised by Treasure Island in 1883; real pirates almost never buried treasure, let alone mapped it.

In which state was Forrest Fenn's Rocky Mountain treasure chest eventually found?

Wyoming: Forrest Fenn confirmed in 2020 that the chest had been found in Wyoming, ten years after he hid it in 2010; the finder declined to reveal the exact spot.

Which 2009 metal-detector find is the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver ever discovered?

The Staffordshire Hoard, found by detectorist Terry Herbert near Hammerwich in July 2009, runs to almost 4,600 gold and silver fragments, including 5.1 kg of gold, and was valued at £3.3 million, split between finder and farmer.

Which instrument did the 10th-century astronomer al-Sufi describe as having over 1,000 uses?

The astrolabe: the 10th-century astronomer al-Sufi listed more than 1,000 uses for it, from surveying to finding the direction of Mecca, and mariners later carried a simplified version to read latitude from the noon sun.

Kit Williams' 1979 picture book Masquerade sent Britain digging for what jewelled prize he had buried?

A golden hare: Williams buried the 18-carat jewelled hare at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, in 1979; it was dug up in 1982 by a claimant whose tip-off traced back to Williams's former girlfriend.

Which historical figure is often associated with seeking the legendary 'Fountain of Youth'?

Juan Ponce de León reached Florida in April 1513; the tale that he was hunting the Fountain of Youth was attached to him only after his death, by the chronicler Oviedo in 1535.

What is the study of creating and breaking codes and ciphers?

The word comes from the Greek for 'hidden writing'. Modern cryptography sits at the intersection of mathematics, computer science and engineering, and underpins everything from online shopping to messaging apps.

In trail marking, what is the term for a mark slashed or painted on a tree to show the route?

Forrest Fenn's treasure poem told searchers to look 'quickly down' once they had found 'the blaze', which is why the word is so loaded for treasure hunters.

What is the nautical term for a measurement of water depth, equal to six feet?

A fathom is six feet, about 1.8 m; 'to fathom' something is to get to the bottom of it.

Which 1857 shipwreck, the 'Ship of Gold', sank carrying California Gold Rush gold?

The SS Central America sank in a hurricane on 12 September 1857 with 425 people and some 30,000 pounds of California gold, a loss that fed the Panic of 1857; Tommy Thompson's team found the wreck in 1988.

What type of map uses contour lines connecting points of equal elevation?

A topographic map's contour lines connect points of equal elevation, so closely packed lines mean steep ground.

Which pirate captained the Whydah Gally when it sank off Cape Cod in 1717?

Samuel Bellamy, the 'Robin Hood of pirates', went down with the Whydah in a storm off Cape Cod on 26 April 1717; the wreck lay under the sand for 267 years until it was found in 1984.

In espionage, what is passing items via a secret location so two agents never meet called?

A 'dead drop' is a secret location used to pass items or information between two people without them meeting, often used in espionage or clandestine operations.

Which of these devices is used for dowsing, a controversial method of finding hidden objects or water?

Dowsing is a pseudoscientific practice of searching for underground water, minerals, or other hidden objects using divining rods or pendulums.

What was a detectorist seeking in 1992 when he found the Hoxne Hoard of Roman treasure?

Eric Lawes found 14,865 Roman coins and 200 pieces of silver tableware and gold jewellery instead. The hammer was eventually recovered too, and went to the British Museum.

What is the term for a container of objects and messages sealed away to be opened at a future date?

A time capsule is a deliberate message to future people, stored away for a set period to help future historians.

Which lost 'Eighth Wonder of the World', a chamber given to Peter the Great by Prussia in 1716, vanished in WWII?

The chamber of amber panels, gold leaf and mirrors was dismantled by German forces from the Catherine Palace and never seen again. A reconstruction, begun in 1979, was finished in 2003.

The treasure galleon San José, sunk in 1708, was found in 2015 off which country?

The wreck lies 600 metres down near Cartagena with cargo valued around $17 billion. Its discovery set off a three-way ownership fight between Colombia, Spain and a US salvage firm, still unresolved in 2025.

Treasure Island's sea shanty goes 'Fifteen men on the...' what, before 'Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum'?

Dead Man's Chest came from a list of Virgin Islands place names Stevenson found in a book by Charles Kingsley, probably Dead Chest Island off Peter Island.

'Gentleman pirate' Stede Bonnet raided Virginia in 1717 from a 10-gun vessel of which type?

A sloop: Bonnet, a wealthy Barbadian landowner, bought the ten-gun sloop Revenge in 1717 and turned pirate purely for adventure; he was captured in 1718 and hanged at Charleston that December.

In which party game do teams race to gather every item on an organizer's list?

Scavenger hunt parties were popularised at 1930s society events by gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell, and one became the plot of My Man Godfrey.

What is a short piece of encrypted text printed as a puzzle, solvable by hand, called?

Once used for real secrets, cryptograms now mostly appear in newspapers and magazines, and Edgar Allan Poe helped popularise them by challenging readers to send him ciphers to crack.

What process uses sound waves to detect objects underwater, as in shipwreck hunting?

Sonar, 'sound navigation and ranging', maps wrecks with sound because radio waves barely travel through water.

Which type of map is made for marine navigation, showing water depths, coastlines and aids to navigation?

A nautical chart is a graphic representation of a sea area and adjacent coastal regions, providing information on depths, coastlines, navigation aids, and other maritime features.

France's Golden Owl (Chouette d'Or) treasure hunt, launched in 1993, was finally solved in which year?

2024: after 31 years, the organisers announced on 3 October 2024 that a searcher had unearthed the bronze counterpart buried in 1993 and could claim the gold-and-silver owl.

Yamashita's gold, alleged WWII loot hidden by Japanese forces, is said to lie in which country?

It is named for General Tomoyuki Yamashita, the 'Tiger of Malaya' and last Japanese military governor of the Philippines. Decades of digs have produced lawsuits but no confirmed gold.

Which fictional archaeology professor first appeared on screen in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)?

Indiana Jones was George Lucas's homage to 1930s serial heroes; his day job is at the fictional Marshall College, named after producer Frank Marshall.

What term is used for the illegal excavation of archaeological sites to find artifacts for personal gain?

Looting strips artifacts of the context that gives them meaning, doing irreparable damage to the historical record.

What does attaching a Travel Bug tag to a trinket left in a hidden cache let its owner do?

A Travel Bug lets its owner track the trinket online as it hops between caches; owners often set a goal, and one trackable flew to the International Space Station while another rides on the Perseverance rover on Mars.

Which puzzle hides words or phrases within a grid of letters for the solver to find?

A word search, also called a word find or word sleuth, hides words in a usually rectangular grid of letters.

Masquerade's casket was buried at Ampthill in the shadow of a cross honouring which queen?

Catherine of Aragon: Katherine's Cross at Ampthill Park marks where she lived during her divorce from Henry VIII, and Williams buried the hare where the cross's shadow fell at noon on the equinox; it was dug up in 1982.

Which TV quizmaster secretly witnessed Kit Williams bury the Masquerade hare in 1979?

Bamber Gascoigne, then host of University Challenge, was the sworn witness when Williams buried the hare at Ampthill in 1979, and he later wrote Quest for the Golden Hare about the craze.

Byron Preiss's 1982 puzzle book The Secret hid 12 boxes; which city's was dug up in 2019?

Boston: in October 2019 Jason Krupat dug the third box out of Langone Park in Boston's North End, following the Chicago (1983) and Cleveland (2004) finds; Preiss died in 2005 without revealing the rest.

In The Secret, each buried box held a key that could be redeemed for what?

Each gem was worth about $1,000, modest next to the Masquerade hare that inspired the book.

Who was revealed in 2020 as the finder of Forrest Fenn's Rocky Mountain chest?

Jack Stuef, a 32-year-old medical student from Michigan, was named in December 2020 as the finder after months of anonymity, and he declined to disclose the exact spot for fear it would be overrun.

Forrest Fenn's nine clues were in a poem inside which 2010 self-published memoir?

The Thrill of the Chase, Fenn's 2010 memoir, carried the 24-line poem whose nine clues pointed to the chest; he wrote it after surviving a kidney-cancer diagnosis in 1988.

Régis Hauser created France's Golden Owl hunt under which pseudonym?

Hauser died in 2009; illustrator Michel Becker took over as official organiser in 2021 and the owl was found in 2024.

Who hid the first documented GPS-located cache, on May 3, 2000?

The Original Stash Tribute Plaque now marks the Beavercreek spot where his bucket sat.

A hidden GPS cache vandalized or taken by an outsider is said to have been what?

The Harry Potter borrowing casts non-players as muggles, oblivious to the hobby going on around them.

In GPS cache-hunting slang, what does FTF celebrate?

FTF stands for First to Find, the bragging right of the first geocacher to log a new cache; hiders sometimes leave a higher-value prize for whoever claims it.

In 1854 guide James Perrott left a bottle for visiting cards at which remote Dartmoor spot?

Early finders posted each other's cards home; a second box was added at Duck's Pool in 1938 in memory of writer William Crossing.

Teams in the MIT Mystery Hunt race to find what hidden somewhere on campus?

A coin: since the first hunt in 1981 the goal has been a coin hidden on the MIT campus; the winning team must write and run the next year's hunt, so nobody wins two in a row.

What cash prize did the Perplex City game offer for finding its Receda Cube?

£100,000 was the prize: Andy Darley dug the Receda Cube out of a Northamptonshire wood in February 2007 after following clues spread across Perplex City's foil puzzle cards.

In Channel 4's Treasure Hunt (1982–89), Anneka Rice dashed about by helicopter as the what?

Skyrunner was Anneka Rice's title: studio contestants directed her by radio as she raced between clues by helicopter, while newsreader Kenneth Kendall presented; the BBC revived the show with Suzi Perry in 2002.

Under the Treasure Act 1996, English finders must report treasure to a coroner within how many days?

14 days: the Treasure Act 1996 requires finders in England, Wales and Northern Ireland to notify the coroner within 14 days of the find, after which an inquest decides whether it legally counts as treasure.

Which East Anglian king is thought to lie in the Sutton Hoo ship burial?

Rædwald, king of the East Angles who died around 624, is the favoured candidate; the Merovingian coins in the burial date it to about 610–635, and its helmet, lyre and Byzantine silver echo the hall scenes of Beowulf.

The Copper Scroll from the Qumran caves lists how many hiding places for gold and silver?

64: unlike the parchment Dead Sea Scrolls, the Copper Scroll is an inventory hammered into copper, listing 64 caches of gold and silver; it was cut into strips at Manchester in 1955–56 so it could be read.

The 1820 Treasure of Lima was allegedly buried on Cocos Island, off which country?

Costa Rica: Cocos Island lies about 550 km off its Pacific coast; in 1820 Captain William Thompson of the Mary Dear, entrusted with Lima's church wealth, turned pirate and supposedly buried it there.

Crates pulled from Austria's Lake Toplitz in 1959 held what Nazi hoard?

The forged pounds came from Operation Bernhard, a plan to flood and wreck Britain's economy that was never fully launched.

In 2015 two men claimed radar had found a buried Nazi 'gold train' near which Polish city?

Wałbrzych, in Lower Silesia: Piotr Koper and Andreas Richter claimed in August 2015 that ground-penetrating radar showed an armoured train in a tunnel near the city's Książ Castle; their dig in August 2016 found nothing.

Edgar Allan Poe's cipher-cracking treasure tale The Gold-Bug is set on which bit of South Carolina?

Sullivan's Island, where Poe had served at Fort Moultrie in 1827–28; the story won a $100 prize from Philadelphia's Dollar Newspaper in 1843 and helped popularize cryptograms.

In National Treasure (2004), Ben Gates steals which document to read a map on its back?

The Declaration of Independence: Gates steals it from the National Archives gala to keep it from Ian Howe, then raises the invisible map on its back with lemon juice and heat.

In Romancing the Stone (1984), the treasure El Corazón turns out to be what?

An emerald: El Corazón, the heart-shaped emerald sought by Zolo and the kidnappers, ends up inside a crocodile, which Jack Colton later kills to recover the stone and buy his sailboat.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre gave Oscars to which first father-and-son pair for one film?

John won Best Director and Screenplay while his father Walter took Best Supporting Actor for the gold-mad prospector.

In It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the stolen $350,000 is buried under what?

A big W: dying crook Smiler Grogan gasps to passing motorists that the $350,000 lies 'under a big W', which turns out to be four palm trees in Santa Rosita State Park.

Pirate La Buse supposedly flung a cryptogram into the crowd at his 1730 hanging on which island?

Réunion, then Île Bourbon, where Levasseur was hanged at Saint-Paul on 7 July 1730; his real haul was the Portuguese ship Nossa Senhora do Cabo, taken in 1721, and the necklace-and-cryptogram story is a 20th-century embellishment.

Galleon-salvager William Phips, knighted for his haul, became first royal governor of which colony?

Massachusetts: Phips, knighted in 1687 for raising a fortune in silver from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, became the first royal governor of Massachusetts Bay in 1692 and set up, then disbanded, the Salem witch-trial court.

Whose funding for 'one more season' let Howard Carter find Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922?

Lord Carnarvon, who had bankrolled Carter since 1907, agreed to fund one final season in 1922; a workman uncovered the first step on 4 November 1922, and Carnarvon arrived for the opening on 26 November.

Where did the Red Army take Schliemann's 'Priam's Treasure' in 1945?

Moscow: Soviet trophy brigades removed the gold from Berlin's Zoo flak tower in May 1945 and deposited it in the Pushkin Museum, whose holding of it Russia admitted only in 1993.

Which children's author wrote a partly fictional account of the 1942 Mildenhall Treasure find?

Roald Dahl interviewed ploughman Gordon Butcher in 1946 and turned the find into 'The Mildenhall Treasure'; Butcher struck the Roman silver, including the 8 kg Great Dish, in a Suffolk field in 1942.

Workmen repairing the bank of which river found the Viking Cuerdale Hoard in 1840?

The Ribble: on 15 May 1840 workmen repairing its embankment at Cuerdale, near Preston, struck a lead chest of some 8,600 silver coins and ingots; the bailiff took it for the landowner, letting each man keep one coin.

The 52,503 Roman coins of the 2010 Frome Hoard were found packed inside what?

Detectorist Dave Crisp left the 45 cm pot in the ground for archaeologists to lift layer by layer.

Who wrote, directed and starred in the BBC metal-detecting comedy Detectorists?

Crook plays Andy alongside Toby Jones's Lance in the fictional Essex town of Danebury; it won a BAFTA in 2015.

Which Indian temple's sealed Vault B stayed shut during the 2011 inventory of its vaults?

Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram: a 2011 Supreme Court-ordered inventory of its other vaults revealed gold, jewels and coins widely valued at about $20 billion, while the sealed Vault B was left untouched.

Treasure rumours surround 19th-century priest Bérenger Saunière of which French hilltop village?

Rennes-le-Château, in the Aude: Saunière's lavish spending on the church, the Villa Bethania and the Tour Magdala in the early 1900s spawned theories of found treasure, though a 1910 church inquiry found he had been trafficking in masses.

Silver salvaged from the torpedoed SS Gairsoppa was struck into 20,000 coins in 2014 by which body?

The Royal Mint struck a limited run of coins in 2014 from silver that Odyssey Marine lifted in 2012–13 from the SS Gairsoppa, torpedoed in February 1941 and lying 4,700 metres down in the Atlantic.

All eleven ships of the 1715 treasure fleet from Havana sank in a hurricane off which US state?

Florida: the fleet left Havana on 24 July 1715 and a hurricane wrecked all eleven Spanish ships off Florida's east coast a week later, giving the Treasure Coast its name; Kip Wagner began pulling up gold there in 1961.

Odyssey Marine's 'Black Swan' haul of about 500,000 coins was awarded by US courts to which nation?

Spain: the coins came from the frigate Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, blown up by a British squadron in 1804, so US courts ruled in 2012 that the haul was a sovereign warship's cargo belonging to Spain; Peru's claim failed.

Which underwater explorer located the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah Gally off Cape Cod in 1984?

Barry Clifford found the Whydah in 1984 after years of searching off Wellfleet; the ship's bell, raised in 1985 and inscribed with its name, made it the first fully authenticated pirate wreck.

The Antikythera wreck, with its famous mechanism, was found in 1900 by divers hunting what?

Sponges: Captain Dimitrios Kontos's sponge divers, sheltering from a storm, found the wreck in 1900 when diver Elias Stadiatis surfaced babbling about corpses and horses, which proved to be bronze and marble statues.

How many Golden Tickets does Willy Wonka hide in Wonka Bars in the 1971 film?

Five: Wonka hides five Golden Tickets; Charlie finds the last one with a coin picked out of a gutter the day before the tour, after a fake fifth ticket in Paraguay is exposed.

Disney's 2002 Treasure Planet reimagines Long John Silver as what?

Billy Bones crash-lands a spaceship at Jim Hawkins's inn with a sphere holding a star map and a warning to 'beware the cyborg'.

What is the name of the schooner that carries Jim Hawkins to the island in Treasure Island?

Squire Trelawney charters her at Bristol under Captain Smollett; Jim later cuts her adrift single-handed.

Treasure Island was first serialised in Young Folks under which pseudonym?

The 1881–82 serial ran as Treasure Island or the Mutiny of the Hispaniola before the book appeared under Stevenson's own name.

The 'Dutchman' of Arizona's Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, Jacob Waltz, was an immigrant from where?

Germany: Waltz was born in Württemberg around 1810, and 'Dutch' was the old American rendering of 'Deutsch'; his supposed mine is sought in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to keep the Ark of the Covenant in which city?

Axum, in Tigray: the Ark is said to rest in the Chapel of the Tablet beside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion, where a single guardian monk, appointed for life, is the only person allowed to see it.

The 2009 Anglo-Saxon gold find near Lichfield lay in which ancient kingdom when it was buried?

Nearly 4,600 pieces, mostly stripped from swords, were bought by two museums for £3.285 million.

Which English amateur archaeologist convinced Schliemann to dig for Troy at Hisarlik?

Calvert's family owned part of the mound; Schliemann was sceptical at first and later took most of the credit.

Whose German-born mother, the Duchess of Kent, organised an egg hunt she described at age 14?

She and Prince Albert later ran egg hunts for their own children, helping root the German custom in Britain.

Which Michigan brothers led the Oak Island 'Money Pit' dig shown on History from 2014?

Rick and Marty Lagina, brothers from Michigan, bought a stake in Oak Island Tours in 2006; The Curse of Oak Island premiered on History in January 2014 and followed their Money Pit dig.