San Francisco treasure hunt ends after lucky winner finds $10,001 prize in unlikely location

A treasure hunt that consumed San Francisco for nearly a month ended Tuesday after a hunter unearthed a box stuffed with $10,001 in cash.

The hunt was titled “Buried Treasure, San Francisco,” but its organizers never actually hid the cash inside city limits. Searchers spent three weeks digging up local parks while the chest sat across the Golden Gate Strait in a Marin Headlands cave.

“It weighs more than 150 pounds, is buried under a foot of earth, and is located within 7 miles of San Francisco’s city hall,” the pair of anonymous organizers wrote on their official website. The 7-mile radius extended just across the Golden Gate Strait into Marin County.

According to the group’s website, the cash was uncovered after an “intrepid problem-solver” deciphered the clues. In an email to SFGate, the organizers said that they did not “know too much about the finders.”

The hunt, which began April 29, generated significant public interest but also caused widespread property damage across several Bay Area public spaces. Eager participants using shovels left behind trenches, damaged plants and severed water lines.

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The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department launched an investigation into the destruction, ABC 7 San Francisco reported, after significant damage was documented at Ina Coolbrith Park, Francisco Park and Washington Square Park.

Park officials and groundskeepers pleaded with the organizers to call off the diggers, reporting destroyed plants and shattered water lines in messages published on the group’s website.

One gardener at Francisco Park reached out to the organizers directly to report “significant irrigation system and plant damage,” writing that “the holes that people are digging illegally and without permits are also not covered over or are done so poorly and will need to be fixed.”

Angel Island park rangers also contacted the creators to report similar destructive behavior.

The organizers posted an update on their website telling searchers to stop digging up public parks and clarified that the cash was not hidden under lawns or planters.

“If you find yourself wondering if the treasure is buried under some nice manicured lawn, or cared for planter, or under irrigation lines … it is clearly NOT,” the organizers wrote. “It's not a trick. It's not some clever ruse.”

The hunt ended Tuesday when the organizers posted a brief message to their website: “The Treasure Has Been Found. Stop Hunting!”

The organizers later posted the solution to the riddle, directing people to the Marin Headlands cave, along with a photo of a team member burying the box.

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This is the second year the anonymous friends have organized the hunt. Last May, a searcher found their 22-pound chest of gold and artifacts — valued at $10,000 — in 11 hours. Hoping this year’s hunt would last longer, the organizers made the puzzle tougher, though they later called the process a “work in progress.”

“This hunt was also confirmation that making a satisfying puzzle is quite difficult,” the organizers told SFGate. “A brief poem that cleverly points to a single location would be quickly solved by a city of such great minds so keen to collaborate. A puzzle that can be interpreted enough ways to slow the solve from hours to weeks is simply a less satisfying solution.”

For this year's hunt, the creators changed the prize from gold to “100 percent cold hard cash.”

They used the same box from the previous year, which the 2025 winners had donated back, but packed it to weigh more than 150 pounds so the finders would “want to bring a friend.”

The organizers wrote on their website that this would be their last self-funded hunt, calling the project “a questionable financial decision the first time and downright idiotic the second.”

Still, they thanked the hundreds of local participants who sent them messages.

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