The Real Life National Treasure Hunt — The Beale Papers
By: Garrett Sims
Tags: Money, Mystery, Adventure, Rich, American History

“There’s gold in them thar hills!” That’s not a line from “National Treasure”, but it certainly pays a nod to the historical treasure hunts of good ol’ frontier America.

Nicholas Cage’s character was on a hunt for an ancient, secret society-buried treasure in National Treasure, and though what he was in search of was fictional, that’s not to say that it’s not based on something very real, and people have tried to cash in, to no avail up to this point — so real to the point that the NSA has a section of their website dedicated to it.

So, what are the Beale Ciphers (or Beale Papers, as they are sometimes referred to)? According to Virginia Living:

“Around 1820, Thomas Beale supposedly went west into what is now northern New Mexico or southern Colorado and discovered a massive vein of gold. Fearing thieves were closing in on him, Beale headed back east to St. Louis, traded some of the gold for jewels, and then continued on to Virginia. Still concerned he was being tailed, Beale allegedly buried the treasure near Bedford, then scribbled out three coded messages, locked the papers in a box, and gave them to a tavern owner. If Beale didn’t return, the tavern owner could open the box, and whoever could decode the sprawling pages of numbers would be able to find the treasure. In 1885, a man named James Ward published the story and three ciphers as The Beale Papers. The 50-cent publication thrilled the nation, and Ward pocketed substantial royalties.” (VirginiaLiving.com)

The Beale Ciphers consist of three cryptograms of numbers, the first cryptogram alleged to state the location of the treasure, the second alleged to state the contents of the treasure, and the third cryptogram alleged to contain the names of the owners of the treasure as well as their relatives.

Are the Beale Papers fact or fiction? Well, if obvious interest by the NSA says anything about it, it’s quite possible that the Beale Papers are the real deal. What’s in question is not whether the papers exist, because they’ve been printed in newspapers and such. What’s in question is whether the treasure truly exists or not. Could there really be a roughly $60 million gold mine buried somewhere in Virginia?

Many have claimed to have deciphered the papers, but it seems as though up until now, no one has managed to make themselves $60 million richer by striking gold somewhere in Virginia. There have been multiple attempts, and for the time being, only the second cipher has been solved:

“Beale placed the ciphertexts and some other papers in an iron box. In 1822 he entrusted the box to a Lynchburg innkeeper named Robert Morriss. Beale told Morriss not to open the box unless he or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. Sending a letter from St. Louis a few months later, Beale promised Morriss that a friend in St. Louis would mail the key to the cryptograms, however, it never arrived. It was not until 1845 that Morriss opened the box. Inside he found two plaintext letters from Beale, and several pages of ciphertext separated into Papers “1”, “2”, and “3”. Morriss had no luck in solving the ciphers, and decades later left the box and its contents to an unnamed friend. The friend, then using an edition of the United States Declaration of Independence as the key for a modified book cipher, successfully deciphered the second ciphertext which gave a description of the buried treasure. Unable to solve the other two ciphertexts, the friend ultimately made the letters and ciphertexts public in a pamphlet entitled The Beale Papers, which was published by yet another friend, James B. Ward, in 1885.” (Wikipedia.org)

“For the past century, the quest to break these codes has attracted the military, computer scientists, and conspiracy theorists. All have failed. Which raises the question: Are the ciphers and the treasure even real?” (MentalFloss.com)

Why not try to crack the code yourself, and strike it rich for the holidays? Virginia country is waiting.

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Sources:

https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/beale-papers/doc656753.pdf

https://www.nsa.gov/Portals/70/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/beale-papers/doc656743.pdf

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/beale-papers/

http://www.virginialiving.com/culture/hope-or-hoax/

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/540277/beale-ciphers-buried-treasure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beale_ciphers