WILLIAM SHATNER: A vault buried in the middle
of the Mojave Desert.
Plundered pirate gold
at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
And a forest in Upstate New York
that may conceal a bootlegger's forgotten fortune.
For hundreds of years,
there have been legends about vast treasures
that are hidden throughout the United States.
Stolen gold and other ill-gotten gains
connected to wars, piracy
and even deadly acts of revenge.
But are these legends of lost treasure
simply tall tales?
Or is it possible that the valuables
are really out there, just waiting to be discovered?
Well, that is what we'll try and find out.
♪ ♪
This wooded region, located in the Allegheny Mountains,
is a popular destination for wildlife enthusiasts,
and also for treasure hunters.
Because, for more than 150 years,
Dents Run has been believed to be the hiding place
of a vast amount of stolen gold.
DANIEL BARBARISI: There's been a lot of attention
on the Dents Run treasure,
and that's tied to something of a legend
that came out of the time of the Civil War,
when it's believed there might have been
a wagon with lots and lots of gold on it,
hundreds of millions of dollars' worth in today's money,
that was used to pay Union soldiers
that was being transported through Pennsylvania.
SHATNER: According to the legend,
in early 1863, a shipment of 26 gold bars,
property of the U.S. government,
was loaded onto a Union Army caravan
in Wheeling, West Virginia.
The caravan was under orders to take the gold
to the United States Mint, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,
where it would be used to pay for the war effort.
Gold shipments were incredibly important
for the Union and its success under Lincoln.
He was reliant on that gold to pay soldiers,
and to pay off some debts to foreign lenders.
And so these operations of transferring gold were secret,
and they were protected by troops
to watch it and guard it.
That was the only way it could be shipped.
SHATNER: 11 union soldiers and three wagons
began the 350-mile journey to Philadelphia,
but just 60 miles into their trek,
an unexpected turn of events
forced the caravan to change their plans.
JAMES BURKE: The wagons were dead headed for Philadelphia,
but then Southern soldiers
were getting close to Pennsylvania,
and they were afraid it would get robbed,
so that's when they detoured.
So, they went up the Allegheny River,
and when they got to Dents Run,
the story says one of the wagons broke down,
up on the mountainside.
SHATNER: Unable to continue as planned, three of the Union soldiers
escorting the caravan reportedly left to get help.
But when they returned days later,
they found empty wagons.
The other soldiers-- and the gold--
had vanished without a trace.
Now, according to the gold story,
the Union soldiers robbed the gold.
They took part of the gold that they could carry,
and they buried the rest someplace around Dents Run.
That's what brings the enthusiasm to the story.
SHATNER: Could there be stolen Civil War gold
buried somewhere in the Allegheny Mountains?
It's certainly an intriguing thought.
But there's just one problem.
No official government records
of the lost gold have ever been found.
WARREN GETLER: People would assume that it would be
in the record of the U.S. government,
in the national archives, but it's not.
And the reason it's not is because it would have been
a huge embarrassment to the Union, to Lincoln.
And it might have caused an economic panic
to have this amount of gold go missing.
SHATNER: It wasn't until 1974 that an article
in Treasure magazine brought the mystery
of the Dents Run treasure into the public spotlight.
The story reported that in 1865, government detectives
recovered two and a half bars of gold
buried under a pine stump
near where the empty wagons were found.
In the years since the article was published,
a steady stream of treasure hunters
have done their own prospecting
in the hopes of finding gold at Dents Run.
BURKE: We're talking about 26 bars of gold.
We've had several people come to us,
one claiming that they found one bar of gold,
another claiming that they found a bar and a half of gold,
and you don't know if any of them's true.
They're out there looking for it,
but I don't think they found it.
SHATNER: Are there more gold bars still buried
in the hills of northwestern Pennsylvania?
Gold that has been hidden for over 150 years,
as treasure hunters believe?
Well, while exploring a dry riverbed in 2005,
deep in the backwoods of Dents Run,
treasure hunters Dennis Parada and his son Kem
discovered some intriguing artifacts,
and a possible hideout, that may hold the answer.
Right at this location here, we discovered a bonfire pit.
And when we dug down about six inches,
we found a lot of bottles,
broken glass, an animal trap
and bullets all over the place up there.
All the bullets, the glassware,
everything here was dated around the Civil War period.
And then I looked off to the left,
and there was a hole in the mountain.
As soon as I came down here and I saw the cave,
I was just drawn right in.
I had to go in immediately to see what was in there.
SHATNER: After descending into the cave
to search for more Civil War artifacts,
Dennis and his son found signs
that they weren't the first people
to enter the secluded hollow.
My son's looking, and he says,
"Dad, there's a hole carved into the ceiling
for a torch up towards the back of the cave."
He put a flashlight in there,
and 32 feet back from the entrance,
there is a vertical shaft.
SHATNER: Dennis and his son were unable to fully explore
the narrow cave.
But they spent years drilling exploratory holes
into the ground above it to search for traces of gold.
And then, in 2014,
their efforts finally paid off.
We drill down eight feet, hook up the equipment.
Gold. Off the scale. Our machine's going, "Gold."
KEM PARADA: It's saying, "Large gold item, ten inches."
So I says, "100% the treasure was here."
The Civil War treasure.
And I'm, like, screaming, "We found it, we found it."
GETLER: Dennis Parada had been working with the state,
getting permission from government
to doing it the right way,
being correctly permitted,
but they would not allow him to dig it up.
And so I called Denny and I suggested to him
that we work together. I can help him with it.
I said, "The only way you're likely to see it
come out of the ground is to bring the FBI,
the Feds, in to retrieve it."
SHATNER: What happened next is subject to some debate,
but according to Dennis Parada,
the FBI took control of the dig site
in late January of 2018.
They conducted a series of scans of the area
using a device known as a gravimeter.
A gravimeter measures density,
and the density of gold is 19.5,
and the density of sandstone, which it was hidden in,
in a cave underground, is 2.5.
The differential would show up hugely
in a heat map of that site.
They did those measurements over a full day,
and they came back with the results,
that showed a very high reading of gold.
That's when things get crazy.
The FBI kicked us off, and they said, "Go home."
And then they returned at 8:00 pm that night,
and dug till the next morning.
DENNIS PARADA: When the FBI dug,
I come up here, and I could see what was going on.
There was 20-some to 30-some agents
up here at all times, standing around.
The backhoe was digging constantly.
When the FBI left, I came back up to the site
the next day to retrieve my hidden cameras,
and then I ran some tests on the site area.
And the readings we had before of metal underneath,
gold and silver, were all gone. Everything was gone.
SHATNER: Is it possible that the FBI took possession
of the Dents Run Treasure?
For now, that question remains unanswered.
In part because the FBI refuses to comment
on what they recovered from the underground cave
in Dents Run in January of 2018.
We want the truth to come out.
This is a big moment in U.S. history.
If the FBI did take the amount of gold
that we think was there,
based on our instruments and our readings,
this would be, by far, the biggest treasure
ever recovered on American soil.
Until more information is disclosed,
the Civil War gold, rumored to have been
hidden in the hills of Dents Run,
shall remain an incredible American treasure mystery.
Just like another legend
involving a notorious pirate and his plundered gold
that may lie off the coast of North Carolina.
SHATNER: Every year, thousands of people gather
at the Ocracoke Pirate Jamboree
to experience a taste
of swashbuckling life on the high seas.
The fair commemorates the defeat
of the most famous and feared pirate in colonial history,
known by the name of...
Blackbeard.
BRADLEY WILLIAMSON: Edward Teach,
also known as Blackbeard, is a legendary pirate.
Now, not much is known about him in his early years.
But it's believed that he grew up in Bristol,
which is a town in England,
and from there, he moved on to Jamaica,
where he worked as a privateer in the War of Spanish Secession,
and that was where his career as a pirate really began.
SHATNER: During the War of Spanish Succession,
from 1701 to 1713, the English government
gave captains of private merchant ships
permission to attack and plunder vessels
that were owned by Spain and France.
Blackbeard was one of those captains,
who were referred to as "privateers."
After 1713, when the war ended,
if you continued to be a privateer,
you were no longer a privateer, you were a pirate.
Blackbeard, and a lot of them, became pirates
because there was no other way of making a living.
SIMON: In 1717, Blackbeard got his own ship,
and became one of the most
infamous pirate captains who ever lived.
He made himself look as terrifying as possible.
He had a very long black beard,
he had very long black hair, and during battle,
he would put fuses, or even candles,
into his beard and hair
so smoke would, kind of, rise up,
and it looked like he was coming out of hell.
Imagine this huge, towering figure
with this big, burly black beard,
and slow-burning fuses coming out
from underneath his hat, just sparkling.
That really created his reputation
as the legendary pirate Blackbeard.
SIMON: Blackbeard and his fellow pirates were plundering
and stealing loot from ships all the time.
In fact, so many, we don't even know
the exact number of ships
that Blackbeard was able to loot.
But they're able to take a lot of loot.
SHATNER: In 1718, after spending years
capturing and plundering ships on the high seas,
Blackbeard's notorious career
came to an abrupt end when he was attacked
off the southern tip of Ocracoke Island.
The governor of Virginia told his coast guard
to capture Blackbeard at all costs.
And so the job went to Lieutenant Robert Maynard.
And on November 22nd of 1718,
Maynard came upon Blackbeard's ship
and immediately engaged him into battle.
And Blackbeard engaged in a fight with one of the men,
who ended up stabbing Blackbeard in the thigh.
And, supposedly, Blackbeard shouted, "Well done, lad!"
And then Lieutenant Robert Maynard ends up
beheading Blackbeard on the ship.
And Blackbeard's head was placed on the bowsprit of a ship,
and sailed up and down the Eastern Seaboard
so everyone would know
that Blackbeard had been killed in battle.
SHATNER: In the centuries since Blackbeard's death,
the mystery of his lost fortune
has captivated generations of treasure hunters.
If someone went out to find Blackbeard's treasure,
they would find approximately $12.5 million
in today's currency.
And so, all kinds of rumors and legends about his treasure
are definitely still out there, and people are looking for it.
And, reportedly, what Blackbeard said was,
"Only the devil and I know the whereabouts of my treasure,
and the one of us who lives the longest should take it all."
SHATNER: With little information to go on as to where on earth
Blackbeard's treasure may be hidden,
fortune seekers began searching the waters of Onslow Bay
for the legendary pirate ship, the Queen Anne's Revenge.
Just four months before his death,
Blackbeard ran his frigate aground
near the outer banks of North Carolina.
Some speculate that the pirate wrecked his ship on purpose
as a way to cheat his crew from receiving
their share of the latest plunder.
The sunken vessel eluded discovery until 1996,
when Mike Daniel and a team of divers
used their treasure hunting skills
to pinpoint exactly
where "X" marked the spot.
MIKE DANIEL: Over the years, I have found a lot of treasure.
A lot of gold,
a lot of emeralds, a lot of silver.
For instance, I found a shipwreck
called the Maravillas, 1656 Spanish galleon,
one of the richest ever to sink.
The whole process of finding a shipwreck
is first, you get the documentation
that gives you a pretty good idea
of where you should be looking.
And so, in order to go search for the Queen Anne's Revenge,
you know, we started looking through
the various historical documents,
and it was said that the Queen Anne's Revenge
supposedly ran aground trying to enter
Topsail Inlet, up in North Carolina.
Even though it's Beaufort Inlet today,
it was Topsail Inlet at the time.
And once you've got that pinned down,
now what you do is you set up a grid system,
and then travel down that line towing a magnetometer,
a electronic piece of equipment
that measures very minute magnetism.
If there is an anomaly in the water,
it would tell you something's there.
And we had a pretty major hit.
I go down, take a look,
and I spot the three cannons right away.
They're sitting off to the side of this big mound...
And that's when we actually said, "Yeah, we've got it."
SIMON: Today, over 400,000 items
have actually been excavated off of the Queen Anne's Revenge.
And these include things like 24 huge cannons came out of it.
They've also found other goods such as personal effects,
and they've found weapons as well.
SHATNER: But despite the vast number of artifacts
archaeologists have salvaged from the Queen Anne's Revenge,
they found no sign of Blackbeard's treasure.
Which begs the question: Where could it be?
It's a mystery that still fascinates
treasure hunters to this day.
SIMON: The big question is what happened to the gold
on the Queen Anne's Revenge?
It's possible that some of it has just been,
kind of, dispersed into the sea.
It could be, perhaps, that Blackbeard
offloaded much of it before
actually abandoning the Queen Anne's Revenge.
It's one of the big mysteries about Blackbeard
that we just don't really know.
It's extraordinary to think that the treasure of Blackbeard,
the most notorious pirate in history,
could one day be recovered.
But there's another gold fortune
that may have been hidden in the mountains of California
that is no less compelling.
It belonged to a Mexican American vigilante
who was known as the "Robin Hood of the Old West."
Here, 13 miles outside the small town of Coalinga,
stand three jagged sandstone outcroppings
known as the Joaquin Rocks.
They are named after an infamous outlaw
named Joaquin Murrieta,
who, according to legend,
hid a treasure beneath these peaks
worth millions of dollars in gold.
Joaquin Murrieta was my fifth great-grandfather.
He was an outlaw, a vigilante,
a robber, in the 1840s.
And that is where the legends of, not only his adventures,
but the gold of Joaquin,
and where he put his treasure, come about.
SHATNER: Did Joaquin Murrieta hide a stockpile of stolen gold
in the Diablo Mountains?
Perhaps, but according to historians,
Murrieta did not start out as a dangerous criminal.
In fact, he reportedly immigrated with his family
from Mexico to California in the late 1840s
to mine for gold.
VALADEZ: In 1848, gold was discovered up in the foothills
of the mountains here in California.
And Joaquin Murrieta, so we are told,
he established a mining claim
to make his fortune with his wife, his brothers,
and perhaps other family members from Sonora, Mexico,
and started making money in the early years
of the California Gold Rush.
SHATNER: By all accounts, Murrieta and his family
soon amassed a substantial fortune.
But then a gang of American prospectors
attacked him and stole his land.
VALADEZ: According to the story, his brother was lynched,
His wife was brutally raped, and then murdered.
And Joaquin himself was left for dead.
VALADEZ: Having just barely survived
this harrowing circumstance where he lost everything,
Joaquin began to organize
other bands of dispossessed Mexicans,
and then they began
a series of attacks for revenge...
...from Los Angeles to San Francisco,
to Sacramento, to the gold fields.
SHATNER: Over the next three years,
Joaquin Murrieta and his band of vigilantes
delivered their brand of justice throughout Gold Country.
In doing so, they acquired huge amounts of treasure.
PETER MURRIETA: Joaquin had a lot of gold that he had amassed over time.
And during the process of that, he started to build a network
of people that were giving him harbor.
And that's where the legend starts of Robin Hood,
of somebody who would take money from white people,
and then give it to a family that gave him safe harbor.
SHATNER: Word of Murrieta's exploits soon spread throughout California.
Eventually, the governor offered a $1000 cash reward,
and called upon the newly formed California Rangers
to hunt Murrieta down.
Joaquin knows that these rangers are closing in.
He's starting to figure out he's got to do something.
He's got this treasure that he carries with him.
What's he gonna do?
The most prominent idea would be that
he buried his treasure somewhere.
SHATNER: According to the story,
the California Rangers eventually caught up
with Joaquin Murrieta and his gang
in the Diablo Mountains.
(gun hammer clicks)
The Rangers reportedly returned to Sacramento
a few days later with a severed head in a jar
as proof that Murrieta had finally met his end.
But that wouldn't be the end
of Joaquin Murrieta's legacy.
The way that we know about Joaquin
is that there was a young writer
living up in the gold fields, a guy named John Rollin Ridge.
And he published a book called
The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta.
And when that book came out,
it was the equivalent of a New York Times bestseller.
It was a blockbuster.
MURRIETA: Joaquin Murrieta's story is the story
that Johnston McCulley used to create Zorro,
and, of course, Bob Kane used the story of Zorro
to create Batman.
And so, if you ask a lot of scholars
who's the first Latinx superhero,
they say, "Oh, that's Joaquin Murrieta, no doubt."
SHATNER: Today, Joaquin Murrieta is celebrated by many
as a folk hero, but the question remains:
What happened to all the gold he was rumored
to have stashed in the Diablo Mountains?
Well, some historians believe Joaquin Murrieta
never buried his fortune in the first place.
They claim he wasn't killed by the California Rangers,
but rather escaped to Mexico.
MURRIETA: A powerful part of the legend in our family
is that the same people that he gave help to,
and gold to, and that hid him,
also gave this great last act of care
by going to a courthouse where there's a head in a jar,
and saying, "Yeah, that's totally him, I swear to it."
And that was how he was able to get away and live,
because that wasn't his head.
The biggest mystery to me
is where did that gold go?
We certainly don't know where,
but it's got to be somewhere.
Did Joaquin Murrieta stash his gold treasure
in the Diablo Mountains?
Or is it possible that, as some believe,
he escaped with it to Mexico?
Either way, the fate of this storied bandit
and his treasure is a fascinating mystery.
As is the case with a notorious gangster
and a vault that he reportedly buried
in the Catskill Mountains,
filled with millions of dollars.
SHATNER: Phoenicia, Upstate New York.
This quaint town at the base of the Catskills
is primarily known for being a popular vacation destination.
But it is also known as the hiding place
of an incredible lost fortune.
Because, according to legend, somewhere in this area,
a safe was buried that contains
tens of millions of dollars in cash, bonds and jewelry
that belonged to a gangster named
Dutch Schultz.
Dutch Schultz was one of the most iconic
early 20th-century mobsters in America.
He was someone that had a name and a reputation
that spread across the country as a real tough guy,
and he became a millionaire during prohibition
on bootlegging and various other rackets.
ALTERMAN: Dutch Schultz became what was known as
the "Beer Baron of the Bronx,"
because during prohibition, it was hard to get beer,
and if you wanted beer,
you had to get it from Dutch Schultz
because he controlled everything above 57th Street
and in the Bronx.
SHATNER: In the early 1930s,
the FBI started building a case against Dutch Schultz,
in an effort to crack down on organized crime.
The investigation was led by U.S. Attorney Thomas Dewey.
Thomas Dewey was a very smart prosecutor.
He went methodically after all of the criminals.
So, Dutch became so paranoid
that he wanted to bury his wealth
before they could take it.
BURNSTEIN: Supposedly, while he was under indictment,
Dutch Schultz had a customized safe
constructed for him that was airproof,
soundproof, weatherproof.
Him and his bodyguard put what was thought to be
anywhere between $5 and $10 million in that safe,
as well as jewelry and bonds,
and they allegedly took that safe
up to the Catskills and buried it somewhere.
NATE HENDLEY: The Dutch Schultz treasure is an intriguing notion
because one of the items
allegedly put into the treasure box
were Liberty Bonds, and these are simply
bonds that could be redeemed at a future date
for more than the value you paid for them.
But no Liberty Bond associated with Dutch Schultz
or any of his accomplices has ever been redeemed.
This is used as one of the clues
that this treasure is still at large.
SHATNER: If it's true
that the Lost Treasure of Dutch Schultz
does, in fact, exist, then where could it be hidden?
Well, according to many researchers,
the most likely place is somewhere along
an old brook named Stony Clove Creek.
ALTERMAN: Even though Dutch was a city kid,
he knew the Catskills well because that's where
he had his stills making the whiskey.
He'd stay at the Phoenicia Hotel,
and then drive up and look at all of his stills.
Back in 1935, there was a train
that went from New York City up to the Catskills.
It went through this area
near Stony Clove Creek and Phoenicia.
One station was called Lanesville,
which was really nothing more than a little shack.
At that time, Dutch was afraid
of being nabbed in a checkpoint with the treasure.
So, treasure hunters have theorized that
he got off the train at Lanesville,
buried the treasure somewhere along the banks
of the Stony Clove Creek because it's extremely remote.
SHATNER: Is it possible that the Lost Treasure of Dutch Schultz
is buried somewhere along the banks of Stony Clove Creek?
We may never know for sure, because in 1935,
a rival gangster named Charlie "Lucky" Luciano
ordered a hit on Dutch Schultz.
ALTERMAN: Dutch Schultz had set up his operation
at the Palace Chop House,
a small restaurant, bar establishment
in Newark, New Jersey.
And two assassins, Charles "The Bug" Workman
and Mendy Weiss, walk into the bar.
Charles shoots Dutch twice.
And there's that famous picture of Dutch Schultz
with his head on the table after he's been shot twice.
He's grievously injured, but not dead.
SHATNER: Dutch Schultz was immediately rushed to the Newark Hospital,
and some researchers believe that, on his deathbed,
Dutch left a final clue as to where
his treasure vault is buried.
HENDLEY: During his deathbed rant, he's giving little tidbits
of possible information about his treasure.
At one point he says,
"Don't let Satan draw you too fast."
That could just be a ramble,
but some treasure hunters believe
this line could be a reference
to a geological formation in the town of Phoenicia
called the "Devil's Rock."
ALTERMAN: There have been scores of treasure hunters
trying to find this treasure
up in the Catskills around Phoenicia.
It is worth so much
that today you could probably buy
a fleet of jumbo jets
with just what's in that treasure box.
And that's why everyone's looking for it.
Will the alleged clue
that Dutch Schultz left on his deathbed
reveal the location of his hidden vault someday?
It's a fascinating possibility.
But there's another famed treasure vault
that was buried in the Nevada desert
that is just as intriguing.
It was built by the owner of a Las Vegas casino,
and is believed to contain 20 tons of silver.
SHATNER: Just beyond the Vegas Strip,
in the affluent neighborhood of Rancho Circle,
detectives are called to 2408 Palomino Lane.
There they find the owner of the popular Horseshoe Casino,
54-year-old Ted Binion,
lying dead on the floor of his den.
Ted Binion was made to run a casino.
He had a big personality,
and lived a life on the wild side.
Definitely a big partier.
And so, when police first examined the scene,
they thought that Ted Binion
probably died of a drug overdose.
People thought that Teddy's lifestyle
had caught up with him.
SHATNER: Binion's Horseshoe casino and hotel,
located in the mesmerizing neon section of Las Vegas
called Glitter Gulch, was founded in 1951
by gambling legend and career criminal Benny Binion.
DOUG SWANSON: Benny Binion opened up the Horseshoe
as the great gambling club of Las Vegas.
Benny was part of this wave of mobsters, racketeers,
coming into Las Vegas at this period.
Moe Dalitz, Moe Sedway, Bugsy Siegel,
they were coming to Las Vegas where gambling was legal,
and they could set up their operations
without having to worry about being arrested.
SHATNER: In 1964, at only 21 years old,
Ted Binion became casino manager for the family business.
And for 30 years, he lived a life filled with parties,
drugs and connections to organized crime.
But by 1996, Ted's fast lifestyle
and criminal activity finally caught up to him,
ending his career at the casino.
SWANSON: Ted Binion was arrested in a drug bust,
and the FBI believed that he was laundering money
out of the Horseshoe.
So, he had this whole array of problems,
and which ultimately culminated in him
losing his gambling license.
SHATNER: After being forced out of the casino,
Binion was faced with the challenge
of where to stash a massive collection of silver and cash,
which he had accumulated for himself,
and had locked in a vault at the Horseshoe.
DAVID ROGER: Ted Binion had, in the basement
of the Binions' hotel and casino,
large bundles of cash,
40,000 pounds of silver coins,
silver bars, bullion,
and when he lost his license,
he obviously had to move the silver out.
SWANSON: There were rumors that Ted buried
$7 million to $14 million worth
of silver bars and coins somewhere out in the desert.
And so, what happened to the silver?
Are there still millions of dollars' worth of silver
floating around out there somewhere?
SHATNER: Shortly after Ted Binion's death in 1998,
there was a surprising twist that proved that the rumors
concerning his buried silver were, in fact, true.
A deputy investigating Binion's ranch in the Nevada desert,
caught a team of workmen loading a dump truck
with more than $4 million worth of silver bars.
Their leader was a man named Rick Tabish.
Rick Tabish operated a trucking operation
that was very successful,
and he knew a lot about construction,
and the story is that Teddy had Rick help him
construct an underground vault on his property,
about 80 miles outside of Las Vegas,
where Teddy put millions and millions of dollars of silver.
And so, Rick was subsequently arrested in that case.
ROGER: Rick Tabish knew what was inside the vault,
and right after Ted Binion's death,
he got a group of guys, a belly dump truck,
and went and dug up the silver.
SHATNER: Rick Tabish was found guilty
for stealing $6 million worth of silver bars and coins.
The stolen silver was returned to the Binion family,
but that's not the end of the story.
Because there are many who claim
that the recovered silver bullion
was only a fraction of the hidden fortune
that Ted Binion had buried out in the Nevada desert.
ROGER: We recovered all the silver that Rick Tabish had,
but it isn't a stretch of the imagination
to think that there may be other items of value
that we don't know about.
People have hopped over the fence at Ted Binion's ranch
and tried digging in the middle of the desert
to find the buried treasure,
but nobody knows where Ted Binion's silver went,
and nobody really knows how much is missing.
Only Ted knows, and he's dead.
SHATNER: What is it about buried treasure
that compels people to risk everything
in search of something that may not even exist?
Perhaps the answer lies
in examining another modern-day treasure hunt,
one that took place deep in the Rocky Mountains,
where, against all odds, a fortune of hidden gold
was actually found.
SHATNER: The Thrill of the Chase hits bookshelves across the country.
The book, written by an eccentric
80-year-old man named Forrest Fenn,
traces his incredible life story,
from serving as a pilot during the Vietnam War,
to becoming one of the most successful
art dealers in America.
But even more excitingly,
the book also reveals that Fenn buried
an incredible treasure somewhere
in the Rocky Mountains.
The treasure chest that Forrest hid
has actually been photographed and put in his book.
It was a bronze chest,
ten inches by ten inches by five inches deep,
and it contained hundreds of gold coins
worth more than half a million dollars.
SHATNER: To entice treasure hunters to look for the hidden gold,
Forrest Fenn composed a cryptic poem
with nine clues pointing to its location.
And just as Fenn hoped,
the poem inspired people
to take him up on his challenge.
Forrest Fenn's treasure became a real phenomenon,
a worldwide phenomenon.
People would come from everywhere
to seek this treasure.
Forrest Fenn liked to say that he thought there were
something like 350,000 people looking for his treasure.
There were some people who became a little too obsessed
with Forrest Fenn's chase, and it cost them their lives.
A man fell down from a mountain,
another was washed away in a river,
and a third man died from exposure to the elements.
And so, at a certain point,
there were a lot of calls for Fenn to end the hunt.
SACHA DENT: Forrest begged people not to go
where a 79 or 80-year-old man could not go.
Unfortunately, I think
the larger the financial incentive,
the more common sense goes out the window.
SHATNER: Ten years after Forrest Fenn launched the hunt
for his treasure, on June 6th, 2020,
he announced that a 32-year-old medical student
named Jack Stuef had finally found the fortune
in the Wyoming desert.
BARBARISI: After it became known that Jack was the finder,
initially, people were very excited.
And then they figured out that he wasn't gonna tell them
where the treasure was found,
and so, that put him in opposition
to the community in lots of ways,
and that's a perfect ground to breed conspiracies and questions
and all that because you don't have all the answers.
Probably the most prevalent conspiracy theory
is called the "nudge,"
which is the hypothesis that, in some way,
Forrest Fenn quickened the end of his treasure hunt,
that he singled out Jack Stuef,
and, in some way, pushed him towards
the actual spot where the treasure was.
SHATNER: Did Forrest Fenn give away
the location of his hidden treasure,
perhaps because numerous people had died looking for it?
We may never know for sure
because Forrest Fenn passed away on September 7th, 2020,
and Jack Stuef has refused to address the rumors.
DENT: Whether or not Forrest helped Jack,
in the end, there could only ever be one winner,
which meant there would be hundreds of thousands of losers.
It's mysterious that people will devote
their time and energy to something
where they are, in all likelihood, going to fail,
and will do it with such energy and life,
as if they know they're going to win.
But treasure hunting is innately human.
It's part of our curiosity.
It doesn't matter if the treasure
is really out there or not,
it's the adventure of it that matters.
Are we captivated by legends of hidden riches
because we truly believe they're out there?
Or do such tales exist
only to fulfill our dreams of adventure?
Well, while some lost treasures may be mythical,
others are almost certainly
stashed somewhere in the United States.
And it's that possibility that compels people
to keep digging and diving and searching
for those incredible fortunes
that, for the moment, remain...
unexplained.
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