Springtime in the Rockies

In Denver, which somehow supports 19 strenuously competitive radio stations, it takes a major uproar to attract the listeners' undivided attention. Last week the uproar was being provided by a self-styled boy genius named Don Burden and his newly bought radio station KMYR. Burden, a lively pitchman of 29 who owns two other stations, made his pitch by announcing a $50,000 "Treasure Hunt." The old scheme has seldom been so doughtily exploited. College boys plastered downtown store windows with promotional stickers, annoying merchants so much that KMYR ran a newspaper ad apologizing. The first hints as to where the loot was buried were totally worthless. Sample: "Fifty grand is much money, forsooth/Don't waste your time in a telephone booth!"

Fortnight ago the contest went into a finale that surprised even Burden. At a minute past midnight of Sunday, May u, the value of the prize was to plunge to a piddling $1,000. Suddenly the clues grew tantalizingly specific, zeroed in on a fast-developing Denver suburb in Jefferson County. A weekend mob of some 25,000 people converged on the area, besieged it round the clock. The treasure hunters climbed trees, trampled new lawns, rummaged through garbage cans, shined flashlights into bedrooms, invaded homes to use toilets, even scaled a householder's roof to case his chimney. Moaned one property owner: "It was like being in an African ant pile. There were so many of them it wouldn't have done any good to kill one." Other get-rich-quick hopefuls delved beneath the gravestones in a local cemetery, pulled up surveyors' stakes in a newly laid-out subdivision.

Midnight came and passed with nothing discovered. Two days later a resident of the suburb, acting on an impulse, unearthed the treasure between two telephone poles at a depth of three inches. Hurrying to claim his $1,000, he arrived at the station in the midst of a swarm of lawsuits from angry property owners. Apparently well content with this harvest of ill will, Don Burden moved ahead with his next gimmick: a "Lucky Phone Number" contest with genuine Shetland ponies as prizes. Crowed Burden: "I'm going to rock this market like it's never been rocked before."

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