EPILOGUE 1
All travelers are on a hunt of some kind. And if travel takes you to the mountains of western Colorado, you might be hunting great skiing, good food, luxury accommodations, or guided adventure. But if your travel takes you to Kasper Ridge Resort, you’ll learn about a hunt of a different kind that’s been going on behind the scenes of the resort’s impressive renovation and relaunch for the last four years: A legitimate, old-fashioned treasure hunt. With a map and everything.
Some readers will recall a man named Forrest Fenn, an art collector in the southwest who published a poem in the newspaper that led the way to a chest full of gold and jewels, thus inciting a lengthy and dangerous frenzy that cost several treasure hunters their lives. This story is similar in some ways—certainly inspired by the tale of Mr. Fenn—but with a much happier ending.
The Hunt for Treasure
In 2019, Archie and Aubrey Kasper received notice that their great uncle Marvin had died, and that he’d left them the resort property they’d spent summers at as children. A huge swath of land in Colorado held an old, run-down resort and a defunct ski mountain was now theirs.
Archie had just finished his time in the navy as an F/A-18 pilot, and his sister was looking for somewhere to focus, having recently finished college. They agreed to head to Colorado and see if the resort was something they might refurbish.
But in addition to the words the will offered and the deed to the property, Marvin’s attorney gave them something else: A shoebox that held two pieces of a crumpled map and a letter from their uncle that didn’t go far toward explaining what the map was all about.
They saved the pieces and got on with the work of assessing the resort. In the process, however, new clues began to reveal themselves. A poem scribbled on a guest room wall with a key taped beneath it. A neighbor with another piece of the map, discovered once they’d figured out that the key opened an old gate to a private park. That piece had letters on it, which eventually matched to symbols. That connection was discovered when a guest inadvertently knocked one of the photos in the bar from the wall. The back of the photo held one part of the key to what a contractor’s 7-year-old daughter identified as a rebus puzzle.
But that only left them with another confusing scramble of words. This one, unlike the poem, contained other clues—words like copyright, movie, and Lola.
In a convoluted journey consisting of some deduction on the part of the Kaspers and an awful lot of luck (discovering that an old stuffed bear was named Rudy after Kasper’s nemesis, Rudy Fusterburg?), they unraveled the confusing mysteries Uncle Marvin had left for them to find. And eventually? They found treasure.
The History of Kasper Ridge
The Kasper Ridge Resort as it stands now was built by Marvin Kasper in 1963, but the Kasper family owned much of the land around the resort as early as 1927, when they built and operated the Kasper Ridge Hotel, a stopping place for those crossing the Rockies and hunting gold in the mountains. The hotel was a luxury establishment, even for the time, offering electricity, running water, and relying on a gas stove in the main kitchen.
It was in that place, just off the main highway, that Marvin Kasper grew up, inspiring in him a love of the country he lived in and the sweeping and terrifying beauty it afforded. He spent his days learning about the mountain, exploring, and delighting in discovery.
In the forties, however, Kasper discovered another love—movies. It was that fascination that led him to leave Kasper Ridge when his parents died and the hotel shut down, and head for Hollywood. Through grit, determination, and a willingness to talk to anyone and everyone, he worked his way into a role as a writer, and found incredible success penning many of the classic films of the fifties with his partner, Rudy Fusterburg. Together, they built a small company called Mountaintop Studios, and enjoyed a decade of renown, glad-handing with movie stars and producers.
There was to be at least one more great love in Marvin’s life, however, and this one was simply unattainable. Annie Lowe, the star of several of the pair’s movies, caught Marvin’s attention—and Rudy’s too. The pair fell for her simultaneously, and Annie, whose real name was Lola, became the tip of a triangle that lasted several years and inspired a pact between the two men. Agreeing that neither of them would risk their friendship with one another or their relationship with Lola, they shook hands and vowed that neither man would pursue her romantically.
Though it broke Marvin’s heart, he was a man of his word.
Rudy, however, proved to be a different sort of man.
Lola, of course, had a mind of her own. And her mind was set on Marvin, something she confided in him when they were alone. The confession led to a kiss, and for a man bound by honor, to overwhelming guilt. Marvin told Lola of the pact, explained that while he adored her, he could never be with her, and asked if friendship might not be enough to fulfill them both.
Rudy did not act so gallantly.
He asked Lola to marry him, telling her that Marvin did not harbor romantic feelings for her, and that the pact had been Marvin’s idea in the first place, simply a way for him to gracefully avoid her unwanted affection. It took convincing, but Lola eventually agreed to marry Rudy. When Marvin found out…
The triangle shattered.
Marvin was heartbroken, both at the betrayal and at the loss of the woman he loved. He fled to the place he’d grown up and took refuge in the dusty remains of the Kasper Ridge Hotel. It was here that he decided to stay, to build. He bought up the land around the hotel, eventually securing ownership of more than fifty thousand acres of mountainous land around the small town of Kasper Ridge. And he began to build.
The resort rose slowly, the creeping pace hampered by frequent storms and by the melancholy sludge in Kasper’s heart. It was nearly complete when Kasper received a letter from Lola. Though he hadn’t explicitly told her where he was going, they’d talked about his childhood in the mountains, and she knew. The letter confided that she didn’t love Rudy and wouldn’t marry him, restated her desire to be with Marvin, and ended with a plea to come back to her.
Marvin did. Immediately.
But Rudy’s fury over the situation resulted in Rudy doing his best to smear both their names in the movie business, getting Marvin blackballed. Lola and Marvin left, running back to Kasper Ridge. Together, they opened and operated the Kasper Ridge Resort from 1963 until 1990. During that time, the resort gained fame as an out-of-the-way retreat for celebrities and millionaires seeking to vacation away from the crowds that flocked to the mountain resorts farther north.
The bar of the resort quickly filled with photographs of Marvin side by side with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles, Audrey Hepburn, Muhammad Ali, and even John F. Kennedy.
Marvin and Lola married and lived out their lives there happily, enjoying the kind of love Marvin had once made movies about.
Meanwhile, in Hollywood, Fusterburg exorcised his own demons by systematically removing every trace of Marvin Kasper’s existence or participation in any of the work that eventually built a fortune in royalties. By formalizing contracts in his own name only, he effectively stole millions of dollars from Kasper, who never pursued legal action.
But About That Treasure...
In 1990, Lola died, and Marvin mourned. He stopped taking care of the resort and it began to crumble around him in his grief. He still hosted family there, his young niece and nephew danced through the hills he’d explored as a child and played games in the empty hallways of the sagging resort.
And when Marvin died in 2019, he left those children the resort. Along with the mystery.
In 2021, Archie and Aubrey opened the refurbished Kasper Ridge Resort, having spent several years working to discover their uncle’s true intent in leaving them the map and key. But business preceded dusty and confusing treasure hunting duties, and though it was never far from their minds, they found no further clues after discovering a dusty pile of scripts and doing their best to unscramble the words of the rebus.
Their best guess? Their uncle hoped they would seek repayment of the massive royalties he’d lost out on after Rudy had removed his name from all the movies they’d written together. The pair went so far as to consult a lawyer.
But something didn’t feel right.
“Uncle Marvin wasn’t a guy who spent time crying over spilled milk,” Aubrey told me when I arrived to learn more about the hunt. “It didn’t feel like something he’d want us to do.”
Her brother agreed, and so they essentially abandoned the treasure hunt, relegating it to campfire discussion and old resort lore.
But there was a symbol on the map they hadn’t questioned. It was a cross, and upon thinking more about it, the pair recalled seeing a wedding photo of their aunt and uncle beneath an arched wooden sign. With another winter setting in, the Kaspers made a final attempt to reignite the hunt, and they went to find the sign.
Another clue appeared. On the ancient wood of the Kasper Ridge Worship sign, which now presides over a Lutheran summer camp, they found a carving and a set of numbers: 515. Of course the numbers were old and worn, and there was debate about whether they were actually 525 or 535, but once again, the hunt had led to more questions than answers. They searched rooms, they wracked brains. Finally, they realized that the enormous painting that had hung in the lobby all their lives was titled “Sea to Sea.”
The frame of the painting was easily twelve feet by ten feet, and it was no small feat lowering it carefully to the lobby floor, but it was an undertaking that paid off. Taped to the back were a final letter from Uncle Marvin, and of course—a movie.
The letter and the movie were intensely personal, clearly intended specifically for the descendants of Marvin Kasper. But the message they contained was universal: the treasure we can all hope to discover in life is love. Marvin emphasized that the connections we make with other human beings as we traverse the landscape of our lives are the most fulfilling riches we’ll ever discover. He spoke of love—of romantic love and also that of friendship. And he left a final hope for the Kasper Ridge Resort that started it all: That it would always be a place that brought those connections together, a place people would go to rediscover the magic in their lives and in the world. A place people would love.