After being diagnosed with cancer in 1988, wealthy art dealer Forrest Fenn claims he buried a million dollars in gold in a wooden chest somewhere in the Rocky Mountains region. Fenn is still alive and insists that his treasure hasn’t been found. He left a poem that serves as a riddle, an obfuscated series of clues on how to find the fortune, and a large community of treasure hunters has taken to finding it.
Bryan and Eva Gisburne have been searching for the treasure for several years
and believe the gold to be in the southwestern section of Montana, in the Greater Yellowstone area. Bryan and Eva also spent the winter designing and constructing special use metal detectors that they are convinced will aid in locating Fenn’s gold.
This project is a photographic essay that chronicles the journey the Gisburnes took to Yellowstone in early April. The Gisburnes’ treasure hunt serves as a prism to illustrate how not everything can be Googled, and used to explore the human drive to solve mysteries. It is a story of human intrigue, and believing in something, even if it seems unlikely.