18 July 2023
SALT LAKE CITY (KTVX) — It took 51 days for someone to find the $25,000 prize in the 2023 Utah Scavenger Hunt.
Treasure-seekers from Utah and beyond have been on an exciting journey across the state to locate the treasure. Using only a secret riddle in the form of a poem to guide them, a wave of hunters did their best to decipher its meaning.
An Iowa woman, Chelsea Gotta, made three separate trips to search and nearly gave up before deciding to give it one last shot.
“I went home and said, ‘I’m done’ — and couldn’t let it go . . . So, I just kept researching this week,” Gotta said in an interview with the hunt’s creators.
“It’s an inspiring story,” John Maxim of Utah Treasure Hunt. “Pretty impressive that she did all that work to get it… The treasure hunt — like we’ve always said — we wanted it to be free and open for everyone, and this just solidifies that anyone can do it.”
According to an Instagram video, the treasure itself was located in Mueller Park, in southeastern Bountiful. A video was shared afterward that breaks down each section of the poem and how they correspond with the clues.
There is no word when another edition of the Utah Treasure Hunt will launch.
Utah Treasure Hunt was first started as a passion project by Utah residents Dave Cline and John Maxim while the pandemic kept everyone locked inside their homes in 2020. From then on, the annual hunt has become an eagerly awaited activity for Utahns across the state.
The first two treasure hunts were self-funded, though several companies have since joined the mix to contribute while giving the founders full creative control to make each hunt as fun as possible.