Crack the Beale Papers and find a $65 Million buried treasure?
The story of a priceless buried treasure of gold, silver and jewels (worth around $65 million in today’s money) began in January 1822. A stranger by the name of Thomas Beale walked into the Washington Hotel Virginia with a locked iron box, which he gave to the hotel owner, Robert Morriss. Morriss was to look after the box for Beale as he went off on his travels.
In May 1822 Morriss received a letter from Beale which stated that the box contained papers of huge value – but that they were encoded for protection. Beale went on to ask that Morriss continue to look after the box until his return. He added that if he did not return in the next 10 years then he had instructed a close friend to send the cipher key on June 1832. After that time Morriss would be able to decipher the code and learn of the box’s secrets.
Well, Beale never returned, nor did Morriss receive the promised cipher key. Eventually he decided to open the box. Inside were three sheets of paper written in code, and an explanatory note. The note detailed that Beale had, with a group of friends discovered a seam of gold and other precious metals in Santa Fe. They had mined this over a number of years – burying the treasure in a secret location for safe keeping. The note then explained that the coded messages would give the precise location of the treasure as well as detailing which men were due a share.
Morriss devoted many years to trying to decipher the code in vain – before deciding at the age of 84 in 1862 that he should share his secret with a close friend. That friend would later publish the Beale Papers in 1885. The pamphlet that was published stirred huge interest in America – inspiring treasure hunters and amateur cryptographers to try and crack the code. The second of the 3 coded messages was cracked by the author of the pamphlet using what is known as a book code. The United States Declaration of Independence was used as the book to encode the message above.
The first number 115 refers to the 115th word in the Declaration of Independence, which is the word “instituted”. Therefore the first letter of the decoded message is “I”. The second number is 73, which refers to the 73rd word in the declaration – which is “hold”, so the second letter of the decoded message is “h”. Following this method, the following message was revealed:
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 for silver to save transportation, and valued at 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 one describes the exact locality of the vault, so that no difficulty will be had in finding it. Source
After the pamphlet was published there was great interest in cracking the 2 remaining papers, an interest which has persisted into modern times. One of the uncracked papers is shown below:
In 1983 2 amateur treasure hunters were jailed for trying to dig up graves in Bedford, sure that they were about to find the missing gold. In 1989 a professional treasure hunter called Mel Fisher secretly bought a large plot of land after believing that the treasure was buried underneath. However nothing was found. Up until now all efforts to crack the code above have ended in failure. Perhaps the pamphlet was a giant hoax? Or perhaps the treasure is still waiting to be found.
The town of Bedford still receives visitors from around the world, keen to try and crack this centuries old puzzle. You can hire metal detectors and go looking for it yourself. The map above from 1891 shows the 4 mile radius from Buford’s tavern which is thought to contain the treasure. Maybe one day Beale’s papers will finally be cracked.
For more information on this topic read Simon Singh’s excellent The Code Book – which has more details on this case and many other code breaking puzzles throughout history.
If you want to try your own codebreaking skills, head over to our Schoolcodebreaking site – to test your wits against students from schools around the world!
