Utah father and son find treasure chest with $25,000 prize

SALT LAKE CITY ( ABC4 ) — After the riddle for the 2024 Utah Treasure Hunt was released this June , adventurers flocked to Utah’s mountains, putting their theories to the test in search of the $25,000 reward.

It’s been nearly two months since the riddle was released, and finally, the treasure has been found.

In an Instagram story by David Cline, one of the organizers behind the hunt, he posted a picture of this year’s winners and wrote:

“Treasure chest has been found! Damon and his son found it searching tonight. John is at Lagoon and I’m getting my kids in bed. By the time we get down there, it will be dark. So we’re planning on meeting him tomorrow morning.”

Cline confirmed with ABC4 it was found in Grove Creek in Pleasant Grove.

Each year, organizers Cline and John Maxim said they like to make the hunt a little different. This year’s twist was that, for the first time, the poem was in another language — Spanish.

“A lot of the movies and stuff that we came up with like ‘The Goonies,’ for example, the treasure map is all in Spanish — so it’s not that weird for us to be like, ‘Hey, this time the treasure is in Spanish,’” Maxim told ABC4.com.

Organizers said they like to change aspects of the hunt each time, and after receiving messages each year to release a poem in Spanish, they were excited to finally put one together.

The Utah Treasure Hunt has been an annual summer event since 2020, when Cline and Maxim said they wanted to find an activity people could safely do during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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