The Beal Ciphers

More than a hundred years ago, a small pamphlet was published titled “The Beale Papers,” which contained three cipher texts. The mysterious codes supposedly gave directions to a treasure buried in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia in the 1820s.

According to the story in that pamphlet a man by the name of Thomas J. Beale and 30 other men came across  treasure in a mine located to the north of Santa Fe.They transported the treasure to Bedford County, and buried it in a secure location. Beale then wrote three encoded letters: one giving the exact location of the treasure, a second giving its detailed description, and a third giving the names and contact information of the 30 partners. He placed them in an iron box and gave them to a trusted friend (he was instructed to only open the box if Beal and his friends were unable to return from a journey they had set out on) —the local innkeeper named Robert Morriss —before disappearing, never to be seen again.

2 out of the 3 ciphers remain un-cracked to this day. Morriss tried to decode the ciphers but was unsuccessful so he passed it onto a friend (un-named) who spent years working on them. He was only able to decode one of them using The Declaration of Independence as a key. The decoded cipher read:

“The first deposit consisted of ten hundred and fourteen pounds of gold, and thirty-eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited Nov. eighteen nineteen. The second was made Dec. eighteen twenty-one, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange for silver to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars.”