Above: (l-r) Shane Pryor, Caitlin Youngk, Jessica Pryor, and Emily Miller of the team Here for the Booty took home $6000 after winning the Dewey Beach Treasure Hunt.
It may sound like a silly old saying, but it turns out, answers sometimes can be found in the stars. At least that’s what two teams of treasure hunters found out last weekend at the annual Dewey Treasure Hunt.
Inspired three years ago by the famous Forrest Fenn treasure hunt in the Rockies, this year’s hunt attracted 34 teams to Dewey, each vying for $10,000 in cash prizes provided by a mysterious figure simply referred to as the “Mystery Entrepreneur.”
Teams were challenged to find four hidden keys all hidden within the boundaries of the town of Dewey. Each key unlocked a corresponding treasure box containing differing amounts of money: $1000, $2000, $3000 and $4000.
Last year all the teams went home empty-handed, not one being able to solve the clues within the hunt’s 24-hour playing time. This year’s hunt surprisingly produced two winning teams: Here for the Booty and The Goonies.
Within the hunt’s first nine hours, Here for the Booty discovered the hidden keys to three of the four treasure chests, which ended up earning them a total of $6000. According to team member Jessica Pryor of Baltimore, Maryland, multi-tasking was the secret to success.
“Last year the four of us were walking around together a lot,” Pryor said. “And we realized that was just kind of a waste of time.”
So, this year they split up. Pryor spent time at the house they rented, cracking codes and solving clues with her friend, Emily Miller, of West Chester, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Pryor’s husband, Shane, and their friend, Caitlin Youngk, of Annapolis, Maryland, searched the streets for the hidden keys. The two groups communicated by phone throughout the day, sharing ground-level observations and possible solutions to the clues.
Clues included coded messages, famous quotes, and the lyric “never ran the streets” from an obscure hip-hop song by the band The EarthCrux, which Miller was able to find online.
“They say ‘sprinting through the crosswalks’ again and again,” Miller said. That hint helped Youngk and Shane find the first key of the day — the one to treasure box #2. The key had been placed in a fake rock among the bushes in the traffic island on Highway 1 across from Nick’s Mini Golf.
What would come as a big surprise to them (and all the teams, for that matter) was the fact that the key to treasure chest #1 had been hidden within 50 feet of where the hunt started, placed in another fake rock behind a nearby fence post.
Here for the Booty was able to find the third key when they solved the riddle that suggested the first three keys aligned with stars in the belt of Orion (the hunter) when the constellation was placed on the map of Dewey the teams were all given.
As successful as they were, however, they were unable to find the fourth key. That honor came to The Goonies, another returning team composed of Sussex County locals all under the age of 20, the youngest group in the field.
Never Say Die
While The Goonies admittedly were a few steps behind Here for the Booty for most of the day, they had at least one thing in their favor: a relentless sense of purpose. After most of the older treasure hunters called it a night, The Goonies kept at it into the wee hours.
“We pretty much walked the entire length of the beach,” said The Goonies’ Eddie Mizerek.
Teammate Landon Arauz suggested it was a mix of dedication and deductive reasoning that helped them find the fourth and final key.
The Goonies – Wyatt Amsel, Landon Arauz, Eddie Mizerek, and Wyatt Bratten of The Goonies discovered the key to the final treasure chest, winning $4000.
“We had some good luck in the beginning,” Arauz said. “We found the first marker, even though the key had been taken already. When we saw the other two keys had been found, we sat down and said, ‘We need to piece together these clues and find out the general location where keys two and three were found.’
Like Here for the Booty, The Goonies also figured out that the locations of the first three keys aligned like the three stars in belt of the Orion. From that, they deduced that the final key was also star-related, which pointed them to the beach entrance at Collins Street.
“And there it was: under a bench,” Arauz added.
At the closing ceremony on Sunday, the four young men received a hardy applause, as they approached the fourth treasure box with key in hand and smiles on their faces. Team leader Wyatt Bratten said a sense of adventure first attracted him to the event last year.
“I remember looking up the story about the Forrest Fenn treasure and I thought it was so fascinating — but [that treasure] had already been found,” Bratten said. “So, when I saw something about the Dewey Treasure Hunt, I signed up and invited some friends.”
With his love for the Indiana Jones movies and other Spielbergian adventure films, Bratten dubbed their team “The Goonies.” His buddy, Wyatt Amsel, came along for the ride.
Although no team solved 2024’s treasure hunt, the two Wyatts discovered that the clues, codes, and conundrums neatly fit into their sense of a good time. They returned this year with the hopes of better luck, bringing with them two new members of The Goonies: Arauz and Mizerek.
“We came back this year because last year was a lot of fun,” Bratten says. He’s glad he did. This year, each of The Goonies will each take home $1000 in cash — and some golden memories.
And that’s the main point, says Nat Measley, who hosts the event and co-organizes it with the Mystery Entrepreneur.
“It feels great,” Measley said when the hunt was complete, “because the people who come back every year are so into the event for the right reasons. It’s all about fun. It’s about adventure — hunting real treasure.”
Measley, who runs his own corporate event and retreat company, has already committed to the next Dewey Treasure Hunt, which will kick off Saturday, November 7, 2026.
To secure your team, visit DeweyTreasureHunt.com.
