A loyal supporter: Forrest Fenn

Why I Support the Center of the West

Forrest Fenn

Since its inception, the Buffalo Bill Memorial Association has benefited from the support of thousands of individuals across the nation and around the world. We’re honored that so many of our members choose to remain loyal supporters after joining, in many cases for the rest of their lives—just like our friend, Forrest Fenn of Santa Fe, New Mexico:

“I was first in the Center [then just the Buffalo Bill Museum] when I was one year old. That was 1931, and my parents always stopped in on our way to Yellowstone. It was a summer pilgrimage for our family and the museum has always been a part of me.

When in the museum, I can get lost in a world that is important to me. I look at the great Alfred Jacob Miller paintings and pretend I am in there hunting the buffalo or trapping beaver. I have frequently thought that I was born a hundred years too late. The western sunshine is not like anywhere else and the Rocky Mountains are a lure that I cannot resist. Read Journal of a Trapper by Osborne Russell, or learn about Lewis and Clark. No one can resist the aura of the West.”

You may recognize Forrest Fenn from his autobiography, The Thrill of the Chase: A Memoir, which includes a poem with clues to the location of a treasure chest hidden somewhere in the Rocky Mountains—a cache that was found in 2020.

First published in Points West magazine, Fall/Winter 2017