This metal box containing approximately $ 10,000 in gold, money and historic artifacts from San Francisco was found late on May 13 on West Ridge Trail in the open space reserve of Mount Sutro, San Francisco.
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If you learned that there was a buried treasure in your city, would you like to drop everything and go get it? This is what some people in San Francisco did Tuesday after a team of two published indices on Reddit leading to a trunk which, according to the team, “overflowed with brilliant ingots, money and artifacts of San Francisco”.
The position quickly became viral. In a few hours, it had aroused hundreds of comments from enthusiasts (“I love a good mystery of San Francisco”) and skeptics (“inside you will only find a pair of tickets for Shen Yun”).
The anonymous organizers of treasure hunt shared this poster with indices on Reddit.
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Those who went in search of the armed chest of shovels included friends Eamong McLoughlin, Sean Rapin, Cian O’Dwyer and Luke Howard.
“We all dragged about an hour ago, and I literally said:” The guys, check that “,” said Howard. “And then we just jumped into the car.”
The clues have led friends, as well as many other people on Reddit, Sutro Baths, a historic pool complex on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
A view of the SUTRO baths in San Francisco, where many people thought that the treasure could be found.
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The four friends worked hard to give meaning to the clues. At one point, they separated and went to different directions.
They like to solve puzzles. But, like many others on Reddit, they also asked an AI model (in their case, Google Gemini) for a small help.
“We connected him just to see what he spit,” said McLoughlin. “But that just confirmed our theory.”
However, after about an hour to search, they decided to continue research in Golden Gate Park.
Friends Luke Howard, Sean Rapin, Eamon McLoughlin and Cian O’Dwyer have ventured to look for the treasure for a day off.
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They said that finding the treasure would be great. But they were more interested in being together in an adventure.
“It’s a bit of old San Francisco with the bizarre quirk,” said McLoughlin. “But people give money – it’s a kind of new San Francisco.”
In San Francisco, treasure hunts are one thing
Treasury hunts are popular in San Francisco, as is fanciful gifts. There are treasure hunts “Emperor Norton” for a gold medallion in the 1950s and 60s and the treasure hunt “The Secret” a few years ago, which focused on the search for hidden jewelry in various cities, including San Francisco. Regarding gifts, an anonymous software engineer recently created a fund of $ 50,000.
People behind this last treasure hunt also wanted to remain anonymous because, as they say, “fantasy and adventure and harms and hijinks live in a sort of legal gray zone”.
They added in an email: “There is also a certain concern about harassuses and harassment. The thirst for treasure and gold can bring out a strange behavior.”
In a telephone interview, the pair added that they are not rich and do not work in the technology sector.
“It was a quantity of non -insignificant savings,” said one of them, adding that they were inspired by both stories of treasures research films like GOONIES And Raiders of the Lost Ark, As well as the real history of the art merchant Forrest Fenn, who hid a treasure of $ 2 million in the Rockies in 2010.
“It comes from a place to really want to do this. And if we could allow ourselves to the hundred thousand dollars or a million, we would do it. Ten thousand dollars looked like the minimum entrance to say: it is a treasure. It is convincing. There is really something that is worth continued.”
The organizers said they had spent months preparing the treasure hunt. So when, less than 12 hours after the Post of Origin Reddit increased, a team of three said victory, they were disconcerted.
“Welp, I didn’t expect it so quickly!” They said.
Super Sleuths Austin Theriault, TJ Lee and Erik Bahri said they had found the treasure on Tuesday evening after a little over an hour of research.
In a telephone interview with NPR, they said they all had jobs in technology. But they knew better than trusting the AI Puzzle resolution skills. When so many people have started to publish AI answers to the clues, “this has in fact strengthened our point of view on the SUTRO baths which not being a place to look at,” said Bahri.
Theriault said they had gone back and forth on the clues all day at work based on their knowledge of the city, their intuition and their intelligence to decipher the clues. A well -designed national park service has also provided precious help.
Austin Theriault, Erik Bahri, Franz and the Treasury
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“We thought that the reference to the SUTRO baths was probably a red herring, both because it is too difficult to hide the excavation and that it is also too victim of the milking,” said Lee, explaining how they understood some of the clues. “In addition, it is not very dark. One of the clues is that it is preserved” in a clearing view and the view of Dark Room “” and that you had to “pack a light”, which told us that it was almost certainly in a park – because everywhere else in the city, you will have the light on the street. “”
Lee, Bahri and Theriault – With The Dog of Theriault, Franz – rather headed for West Ridge Trail in Mont Sutro Open Space Reserve. They dug and finally found the price buried under a bush near an intersection of hiking – more than five kilometers from SUTRO BATHS.
Among the artefacts found in the buried metal box, there were ingots and copper coins, $ 2, silver ounces, a golden nugget, three Barry Bond baseball cards, a bottle of sand, a commemorative piece of 1915 and a ticket for the Golden Gate international exhibition of 1939.
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Austin Theriault
“It is to validate to be like:” I know enough San Francisco “enough to find this in the first place in the first place that we have checked,” said Theriault of the Treasury, which includes a big gold nugget in a bottle blocked with sand, golden francs, another bronze find Panama Pacific.
“The organizers did it like a love letter to the city,” said Lee. “And so it is rewarding to know, at least for me, that someone who loves the city as much as the organizers were able to find the treasure.”
For their part, the organizers told NPR that they would like to make more treasure hunts in the city – if a rich donor is ready to intensify.
Jennifer Vanasco has published this story for air and the web. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
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