Netflix’s Newest Docuseries Marks The End Of One Crazy Treasure Hunt, And The Beginning Of Another

If you grew up loving The Goonies or ever got in trouble for digging up your backyard looking for buried treasure, Netflix’s latest series, Gold & Greed: The Search For Fenn’s Treasure, brings all your childhood dreams to life, with more than one life-threatening twist.

Documenting the infamous treasure hunt conceived by art dealer, author, former Air Force pilot, and general man of mystery, Forrest Fenn, Gold & Greed dives deep into the human psyche and the great lengths humans are willing to go to find connection.

Conceived in 2010, when Fenn was 80 years old, the treasure hunt originated in a self-published memoir, entitled The Thrill Of The Chase, in which Fenn included a cryptic poem that promised to lead to a buried treasure with a value between $1 – $5 million dollars.

While the search first generated local buzz in his residence of Santa Fe, it soon grew to national notoriety once major networks decided to start covering the adventure in 2013, culminating in a search party that totaled around 300,000 participants.

The documentary details the experience of several searchers including retiree Cynthia Meachum, who developed a personal relationship with Fenn during her time working on the hunt, computer programmer Justin Posey, who trained his dog to sniff out bronze as part of his approach, and the Hurst family who began the hunt as a means of escaping financial hardship, but ended up sacrificing years of their life in its pursuit.

In its most nefarious moments, the series weighs the morality of the manipulative tactics Fenn used to capture and maintain the attention of so many people, speculating a to stay relevant in his old age, as well as the decision not to call off the hunt once a number of people lost their lives searching in remote and treacherous areas across at least 8 U.S. States. The stakes escalate even further when Fenn’s own family becomes the target of ongoing stalking and break ins, with one man being incarcerated twice over the course of the experience.

While you can rest assured that Netflix does finally answer the question, “Where did Forrest bury the treasure?“, the excitement and magic of the hunt continue with Posey’s announcement of a new hunt in the final episode, for which he has hidden a number of clues within his interviews throughout the documentary. Hawkish fans are bound to rewatch each episode several times in order to pick apart his every comment, continuing the obsession first ignited by Fenn himself.