From precious gems to hidden gold, treasure can be found across the world for those willing to search for it. Here are some different treasure hunts to embark on for summer vacation.
Adventures for all
Tropical Treasure Hunt Co.
An organized treasure hunt can be a unique way to explore a new city with friends and family, allowing visitors to solve puzzles and follow clues while sightseeing.
The United Kingdom’s Treasure Trails offers more than 1,200 self-guided walking tours with themes including treasure hunts, murder mysteries and spy missions. Popular excursions include finding a lost royal gem at St. Katherine Docks and the Tower of London, tracking down Shakespeare’s missing bones in Stratford-upon-Avon and hunting for stolen diamonds in Cambridge’s City Centre.
Olentangy Caverns
For beachside fun, Tropical Treasure Hunt in the U.S. Virgin Islands offers pirate-themed adventures on St. Thomas Island, varying in length and activities. Its Golden Age of Piracy treasure hunt, which was awarded Best New Tour of 2024 by Disney Cruise Lines, includes admission to the Pirates Treasure Museum, where participants must piece together a treasure map. Meanwhile, the Salty Piracy Adventure and the Ghosts of Piracy Past hunts feature snorkeling and a nighttime kayaking experience, respectively.
For a local excursion, Olentangy Caverns, which is open through Nov. 1, offers a treasure hunt maze. Each visitor receives three tokens, which they can use upon finding treasure shops in the maze to obtain treasures such as arrowheads or gems.
For adventures in nature, Franklin County Metro Parks’ annual geocaching trail features GPS-based hunts for 18 hidden containers across different parks. The GeoTrail is open May 31-Nov. 30.
Riches and recreation
There are opportunities to potentially discover treasure in the midst of outdoor activity throughout the U.S.
Treasure Trails
Located along California’s scenic Gold Rush Trail (Highway 49), Marshall Gold Discovery State Park and historic gold rush towns – such as Placerville, Jamestown and Columbia State Historic Park – give visitors the chance to pan for gold, providing equipment and even lessons.
On the East Coast, treasure hunters can search for Spanish silver and gold scattered across the Florida coastline by a hurricane in 1715. This Treasure Coast – which stretches across Martin, St. Lucie and Indian River counties – is just one of many metal detecting adventures available in the Sunshine State.
For those seeking precious gems, Arkansas’s 37.5-acre field in the Crater of Diamonds State Park is the world’s only public-access diamond hunting site. Diamonds have been found continuously since 1906, with visitors finding an estimated one to two diamonds per day.
Additionally, Montana locations such as Gem Mountain Sapphire Mine in Philipsburg and Spokane Bar Sapphire Mine in Helena allow visitors to sift for gems, while Hiddenite, N.C.’s Emerald Hollow Mine is the only one in the world allowing public prospecting.
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Million-dollar mysteries
Visit Chandler
Lost Dutchman State Park
In 2010, art dealer Forrest Fenn’s memoir, The Thrill of the Chase, described the whereabouts of a cache worth at least $1 million in a cryptic poem. After many wild pursuits, it was eventually found in the Rocky Mountains in 2020.
Fenn inspired modern treasure hunts, as seen in books such as Jon Collins-Black’s There’s Treasure Inside, which gives clues to five treasure boxes hidden across the U.S., and Justin Posey’s Beyond the Map’s Edge, which hints at a treasure somewhere in the American West.
Other hunts have been running for decades, including Byron Priess’s The Secret (1982), which hides clues in 12 paintings and poems on the location of 12 buried boxes, of which only three have been found.
Even older unsolved treasure hunts include:
- The Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains, arising around the 1820s-80s
- The 1822 Beale ciphers, which allegedly reveal the location of more than $60 million in buried gold, silver and jewels in Bedford County, Va.
- Aztec King Montezuma’s gold cache, which is believed to be in the canyons near Kanab, Utah, though treasure hunters since 1914 have come up empty-handed
Amanda Stevens is a contributing writer for CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at feedback@cityscenemediagroup.com.
