Four days into the first Pioneer Press Treasure Hunt in 1952, three St. Paul youths pulled a small metal chest out of the snow in Highland Park.
Brothers Ron and Richard Roy were digging with a neighbor near the Montreal Avenue pedestrian bridge.
“My brother yelled that he found it and we ran over there,” recalled Ron Roy, now 74.
But instead of a voucher for the $1,000 prize, the children found an egg inside, along with a mocking poem signed “King Kidder.”
It was one of four phony treasure chests that would fool fortune-seekers that year.
And as if that weren’t cruel enough, the real treasure chest was found in the same park the following afternoon — about 300 yards south of where the Roys dug up the phony prize.
Arthur Jensen, hunting not far from West Seventh Street with his brother, discovered it while probing the snow with a shovel.
“I found it,” muttered Jensen, a quiet 3M employee who lived in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood. The 150 or so others who were combing the park quickly crowded around him.
A passing police officer took the precaution of driving Jensen to the Pioneer Press-Dispatch offices in downtown St. Paul, where three explosives were detonated on the rooftop to signal the end of the Treasure Hunt.
By then, 11 of the 13 clues had been published — one each day in the morning Pioneer Press and another in the afternoon Dispatch. To avoid leaks, the superintendent of the composing room set the clues in type himself just minutes before the issues went to press.
In addition to the $1,000 reward, Jensen would receive $100 for wearing a Winter Carnival button when he claimed his prize. That $1,100 would be worth about $9,800 in today’s dollars.
And what did 41-year-old Jensen buy with his prize money? A new hat for his wife, Blanche.
Asked why she chose a conservative black pillbox number over the flashier feathered ones available in the downtown St. Paul store where she was shopping, Blanche Jensen told Pioneer Press reporter Jack Weinberg that she was “not accustomed to such elaborate hats.”
As for the Roys, this wouldn’t be their last Treasure Hunt.
“My mother would drag us out every year,” Ron Roy said. “The Buick just had a little heater under the seat and we’d freeze.”
He still has the phony treasure chest all these years later, tucked away in his basement.
Copyright 2016 Pioneer Press.