‘Feels like a dream’: Utah father and son find treasure chest with $25,000 prize

SALT LAKE CITY ( KTVX ) — A father-and-son duo walked away with $25,000 after winning the 2024 Utah Treasure Hunt.

Organizers released a poem filled with riddles for the hunt in June, and adventurers flocked to Utah’s mountains, putting their theories to the test in search of the big reward.

On Friday, August 9, Damon Johnson and his son Ty discovered the chest near a rock along the Grove Creek Trail in Pleasant Grove.

“It still feels like a dream,” Ty told Nexstar’s KTVX.

Creators David Cline and John Maxim said they like to change aspects of the hunt each year. For the first time ever, this year’s poem was in another language — Spanish.

Johnson said after the eighth clue was released on Friday afternoon, everything just clicked into place. The organizers had posted a photo of the rock near the concealed chest.

“We came around a bush when we were looking for it, and I saw the rock,” Johnson said, adding that he was a “little suspicious” at first because the rock looked slightly different in person.

Cline and Maxim said that while it’s bittersweet to see this year’s hunt end, there’s a sense of pride and relief.

“We’re always excited to meet the treasure hunters and to have a resolution of the hunt. It’s exciting to meet the family that found the treasure and to know that it got solved and how it got solved,” said Maxim.

As for what Johnson plans to do with the prize money, he said he wants to put it to good use.

“I’m going to finish my degree and go back-to-school shopping today. It’ll be the first thing we spend it on,” the dad said.

He also said he wants to pay off some debts and put money into a school fund for his kids.

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 pandemic.

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