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Let’s hear from the Newton Falls Treasure Hunt Winner- Six Questions with Trevor!
(Join discussions on the MW Discord or MW Facebook Group page)
The Newton Falls Treasure Hunt was an incredible treasure hunt for Spring/Summer 2026 season. Created by Tom Colosimo of Fieldview Acres Mercantile, its primary goal was not just to hide a prize, but was also to bring tourism and business to the small town of Newton Falls, Ohio.
Over five months, the prize grew from $1,000 to over $37,000 in cash, gold, silver, jewelry, and donations while thousands of visitors came to explore the town. As mentioned in a Six Questions with Tom at the start of the hunt – all 10 clues were needed. The final clue was released on Tuesday July 7th – and in the afternoon on July 9th – Trevor and family successfully claimed the treasure!
Huge thanks to Trevor for sharing some of his adventure in the following Six Questions! Enjoy!
- 1Q) Congrats on the win! At what point did you decide, “I’m going to give this hunt everything I’ve got”?
I saw it announced about a month before it went live and put it on the calendar. Once it launched and started growing like crazy, I think everyone started paying a lot of attention!
- What convinced you it was worth the level of commitment to travel to location and stay for days with your family?
We always do a trip back to the midwest to visit the grandparents in the summer, so it was pretty easy to slightly change the route and spend some time in Newton Falls. Any time there is a hunt that we can all do together, it gets a bump. We also try to stick to a 10% rule. Don’t spend more than 10% of the potential prize on travel. This was so big it was easy to stay way under that, so we decided to do it.
- Had you initially worked some clues from home before going or all on site?
I had spent many hours at home and had solid ideas of locations I thought all of the clues pointed to before getting on site to confirm. The complexity came when determining exactly what the counts were in some of those locations. That was something that Tom did incredibly well in this hunt, AI may have helped people research, but you really had to be BOTG to be able to get the final solution.
- 2Q) You’ve won multiple treasure hunts now. Did you approach the Newton Falls hunt the same way you approached your previous wins, or did this hunt require a completely different strategy?
It feels like every hunt requires a unique strategy based on what is presented and this one was no different. This was all about digging into the history of the town landmarks and fitting them to the clues.
- 3Q) Can you walk us through your solving process? From reading the first clue to recovering the treasure, how did you approach the hunt, and how did your thinking evolve as more clues were released?
I spent a lot of time researching Newton Falls and identifying all of the potential locations and what their history was. I walked around google street view wherever I could which didn’t give much. Once I felt confident about the specific location of a clue, I’d find anything I could that matched. For example, I was able to find a clear picture of the door at the Masonic Temple and realized the letter sequence was there in reverse with the number 39.
The actual solve came from some of the more concrete (or at least I thought) tokens that had been determined and the math for the longitude. With the Harding train 5224, 3332 from the cemetery bridge plaque and the math that clue #9 outlined, you got 80.9776 for the longitude. This is a line that goes right past the back of Fieldview Acres Mercantile. That’s where we found the window, door, window pattern and knew we had the right spot. The latitude math was where the tokens became difficult to resolve until finding that the Broad Street Station address was 75. I finally found that the night before, but it still took the entire morning until around 2pm to actually put them all together correctly.
(full solution of the hunt shared by Tom on the FB page)
- 4Q) Every treasure hunt has highs and lows. What was your biggest challenge?
The biggest challenge with this hunt was simply the fact that there were so many possible “tokens” for each clue. Particularly clue #6. You had 3 concrete forms behind the waterfall, 8 flower pots on the bridge, 6 flags behind the Veterans monument (Jennifer found these and ended up being the token), benches, etc. The same thing existed to some extent for most of the clues (USO had 6 pine trees, then 2 pine trees, 7 trees in the back) and when you combined all 8 it created MANY possibilities, which is where everyone was struggling. Couple that with getting no verification of what you had right or wrong… just that your answer was wrong, made it very challenging.
- Did ever you feel like giving up or feel like you wouldn’t come up with the solution first?
We were never going to give up, but absolutely knew we may not come up with the solution first. There were way too many smart people in town actively hunting to think someone else couldn’t get the answer first. In the end it was very close with the other team that had found the pattern.
- If so, what kept you going? (and with confidence it wasn’t a waste of time?)
For us it’s never a waste of time because we were having so much fun exploring the town, eating great food and getting to spend time with all of the other treasure hunters. Even if someone else had beaten us to it, it would have been a great trip.
- 5Q) Take us back to the moment you realized you had actually solved it. Was it one ‘aha’ moment or was it a struggle/questionable to the end? Please share how your whole family felt – and yourself!? Is this becoming too routine?
We had already been wrong about the exact arrangement of the 8 tokens and still didn’t know if we fundamentally had something we thought was locked wrong. Finding the 75 token that felt natural gave a bit more hope, but there was no way to know if that was right or not (I had previously had the 75 coming from the span of the cemetery bridge).
After treasure hunting for awhile, we’ve learned that if you’re saying to yourself “That can’t be a coincidence”, you’re wrong. It can always be a coincidence. So, the moment we knew it was solved was when Tom said, “You got it”.
- 6Q) Now that you’ve experienced multiple treasure hunts, what’s one piece of advice you’d give someone entering their very first treasure hunt?
Always stay open to the very likely possibility that you’re wrong about something that you think you’re positive about.
- Bonus: What’s next for you? Are you already chasing another treasure?
Take a little bit of a break and then start focusing on some of the more open ended hunts like There’s Treasure Inside. Believe it or not everyone, Jenny and I ran into each other on the trail to Little Rock Pond! IYKYK 🙂
