The Beale ciphers are a set of three ciphertexts, one of which allegedly states the location of a buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels estimated to be worth over $60 million . Comprising three ciphertexts, the first (unsolved) text describes the location, the second (solved) ciphertext accounts the content of the treasure, and the third (unsolved) lists the names of the treasure's owners and their next of kin.
The story of the three ciphertexts originates from an 1867 pamphlet called The Beale Papers, detailing treasure being buried by a man named Thomas J. Beale in a secret location in Bedford County, Virginia, in about 1820. Beale entrusted a box containing the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared, never to be seen again. According to the story, the innkeeper opened the box 23 years later, and then decades after that gave the three encrypted ciphertexts to a friend before he died. The friend then spent the next 20 years of his life trying to decode the messages, and was able to solve only one of them, which gave details of the treasure buried and the general location of the treasure. The unnamed friend then published all three ciphertexts in a pamphlet which was advertised for sale in the 1880s.
Since the publication of the pamphlet, a number of attempts have been made to decode the two remaining ciphertexts and to locate the treasure, but all efforts have resulted in failure.
There are many arguments that the entire story is a hoax, including the 1980 article "A Dissenting Opinion" by cryptographer Jim Gillogly, and a 1982 scholarly analysis of The Beale Papers and their related story by Joe Nickell, using historical records that cast doubt on the existence of Thomas J. Beale. Nickell also presented linguistic evidence demonstrating anachronisms—words such as "stampeding", for instance, are of later vintage. His analysis of the writing style showed that Beale was almost certainly James B. Ward, whose 1885 pamphlet brought the Beale ciphers to light. Nickell argues that the tale is thus a work of fiction, specifically a "secret vault" allegory of the Freemasons; James B. Ward was a Mason himself.
Background
A pamphlet published in 1885, entitled The Beale Papers, is the source of this story. The treasure was said to have been obtained by an American named Thomas J. Beale in the early 1800s, from a mine to the north of Nuevo México (New Mexico), at that time in the Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México (an area that today would most likely be part of Colorado). According to the pamphlet, Beale was the leader of a group of 30 gentleman adventurers from Virginia who stumbled upon the rich mine of gold and silver while hunting buffalo. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of precious metals, which they then charged Beale with transporting to Virginia and burying in a secure location. After Beale made multiple trips to stock the hiding place, he then encrypted three messages: the location, a description of the treasure, and the names of its owners and their relatives. The treasure location is traditionally linked to Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia.
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.
Ward is thus not "the friend". Ward himself is almost untraceable in local records, except that a man with that name owned the home in which a Sarah Morriss, identified as the spouse of Robert Morriss, died at age 77, in 1863. He also is recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863.
The images below, transcribed from the pamphlet, show the original line-breaks for easy comparison. In the second cryptogram, the original cipher errors are highlighted in red.
Deciphered message
The plaintext of paper number 2 reads:
I have deposited in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number three, herewith:
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 to save transportation, and valued at thirteen thousand dollars.
The above is securely packed in clay pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.
The second cipher can be decrypted fairly easily using a modified copy of the United States Declaration of Independence, but some editing is necessary. To decrypt it, one finds the word corresponding to the number (e.g., the first number is 115, and the 115th word in the Declaration of Independence is "instituted"), and takes the first letter of that word (in the case of the example, "I").
Beale used a version of the United States Declaration of Independence slightly different from the original, and made mistakes in numbering it. To extract the hidden message, the following five modifications must be applied to the original text: after word 154 ("institute") and before word 157 ("laying"), one word must be added. The pamphlet handles this by inserting "a" before "new government". after word 240 ("invariably") and before word 246 ("design"), one word must be removed (probably "a"). The pamphlet's numbering has eleven words between the labels for 240 and 250. after word 466 ("houses") and before word 495 ("be"), ten words must be removed (probably "He has refused for a long time after such dissolutions"). The pamphlet has two labels for 480. after word 630 ("eat") and before word 654 ("to"), one word must be removed (probably "the"). The pamphlet's numbering has eleven words between the labels for 630 and 640. after word 677 ("foreign") and before word 819 ("valuable"), one word must be removed (probably "their"). The pamphlet's numbering has eleven words between the labels for 670 and 680.
Furthermore: Words 78 and 79 ("self-evident"), shown hyphenated, are counted as two words. The first letter of word 95 ("inalienable") is always used as a "u" ("unalienable"). Words 509 and 510 of the modified text ("mean time") are counted as two words, despite being shown as one word. The first letter of the 811th word of the modified text ("fundamentally") is always used by Beale as a "y". The first letter of the 1005th word of the modified text ("have") is always used by Beale as an "x".
Finally, in the decoded text there are six errors, probably due to wrong transcription of the original paper: ... 84, 57, 540, 217, 115, 71, 29, 84 (should be 85), 63, ... consistcd ("consisted"). ... 53 (should be 54), 20, 125, 371, 38, 36, 10, 52, ... rhousand ("thousand"). ... 2, 108 (should be 10, 8), 220, 106, 353, ... itron ("in iron"). ... 440 (should be 40), 370, 643, 466, ... uith ("with"). ... 14, 73, 84 (should be 85), ... thc ("the"). ... 807, 81, 96 (should be 95), 405, 41, ... varlt ("vault").
Additional Declaration differences affect paper number 1: word 210 of the modified text ("more") is shown as "now"; words 919 and 920 of the modified text ("fellow citizens") are shown hyphenated (also affects paper number 3); two extra words ("made" and "the") are shown in modified text positions 1058 and 1188; a word is removed ("of") after modified text position 1125. The other slight changes probably have no consequences.
Many versions of the Declaration of Independence have been printed, with various adjustments to paragraphing, word inclusion, word changing, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.
The lack of clear images of the original ciphers, combined with the large quantity of numerals, has led to numerals being misprinted or omitted in many sources.
The Beale Papers text, on pages 20 to 21, gives an alleged translation of the second ciphertext, but it has nine differences from the actual one. The differences are shown here as {alleged decipherment | actual decipherment}: I have deposited, in the county of Bedford, about four miles from Buford's, in an excavation or vault, six feet below the surface of the ground, the following articles, belonging jointly to the parties whose names are given in number {“3,” | three} herewith: The first deposit consisted of {one thousand | ten hundred} and fourteen pounds of gold, and {three thousand | thirty-} eight hundred and twelve pounds of silver, deposited {November, 1819 | Nov. eighteen nineteen}. The second was made {December, 1821 | Dec. eighteen twenty-one}, and consisted of nineteen hundred and seven pounds of gold, and twelve hundred and eighty-eight {pounds | } of silver; also jewels, obtained in St. Louis in exchange {for silver | } to save transportation, and valued at {$13,000 | thirteen thousand dollars}. The above is securely packed in iron pots, with iron covers. The vault is roughly lined with stone, and the vessels rest on solid stone, and are covered with others. Paper number {“1” | one} describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it.
Value The treasure's total weight is about three tons, as described in inventory of the second cryptogram. This includes approximately 35,052 troy ounces of gold, 61,200 troy ounces of silver (worth about million and million, respectively, in October 2024) and jewels worth around in 2017.
Authenticity There has been considerable debate over whether the remaining two ciphertexts are real or hoaxes. An early researcher, Carl Hammer of Sperry UNIVAC, used supercomputers of the late 1960s to analyze the ciphers and found that while the ciphers were poorly encoded, the two undeciphered ones did not show the patterns one would expect of randomly chosen numbers and probably encoded an intelligible text. Other questions remain about the authenticity of the pamphlet's account, and its background story has several implausibilities, being based almost entirely on circumstantial evidence and hearsay.
Items that raise doubt about the ciphers include: The second message, describing the treasure, has been deciphered, but the others have not, suggesting a deliberate ploy to encourage sustained interest in deciphering the other two texts, which would prove to be impossible. The second message even cross-references the first one, despite Beale supposedly wanting to send Morris a key to all of the three ciphers altogether. Also, the original sale price of the pamphlet, 50 cents, was a high price for the time , and the author wrote that he expected "a wide circulation".