The Beale Ciphers, also known as the Beale Papers, are a set of ciphers dating back to the 1800s that supposedly detail the contents and location of buried treasure in Virginia. These ciphers have baffled many people for centuries; some have even started digging without first cracking the code. Still, there are others who question the authenticity of the ciphers and the information that was published along with them. We’ll tell the story and let you decide if you think the Beale Ciphers could be real or fake.
In 1817, Thomas J. Beale led a party of 30 men on a buffalo hunt in a region north of Santa Fe. The men wound up discovering a rich vein of gold and abandoned the hunt in favor of mining. They accumulated a large store of gold and other metals over the next two years and ultimately decided to bring it back to Virginia by wagon. Once back home, they buried the gold, silver, and other riches in iron pots in a stone-lined secret vault six feet below the surface. It’s estimated that the modern value of this cache is approximately 30 million dollars.
Beale and his group entrusted their secret to Robert Morriss, an innkeeper in Lynchburg. Beale gave Morriss an iron box and instructed him to keep it sealed for ten years while the men traveled west again to accumulate more riches. If they failed to return after ten years passed, Morriss was to open the box and follow the instructions within.
The men did not return and it took Morriss 23 years to open the box. Inside, he found a letter telling him to uncover the treasure and disperse it to the men’s surviving relatives. Along with the letter, there were three cryptograms that, once decoded, would divulge the location of the treasure, the contents of the cache, and information about the family members of the men. Morriss was supposed to receive a key for decoding the cryptograms, but it never arrived. He spent years trying to decrypt the messages, but was not able to do so.
Before he died, Morriss passed the cryptograms to James B. Ward in 1863. By accident, Ward solved the second cryptogram cipher by using the Declaration of Independence to decode the message. It listed the contents of the secret vault. However, Ward was unable to decrypt the other two messages after years of trying. He decided to publicize the cryptograms to remove the responsibility from his own shoulders. In 1885, he published a pamphlet with the very long title of The Beale Papers containing Authentic Statements regarding the TREASURE BURIED in 1819 and 1821, near Bufords, in Bedford County, Virginia, and Which Has Never Been Recovered. Each copy was sold for 50 cents, which is approximately $13 today.
Since the publication, thousands of people have attempted to decode the messages, but none have been successful. Some people skipped the ciphers all together and began digging in locations that they thought to be promising. The Beale Cypher Association was founded in 1968, with the hope that a large pool of talent and resources could help solve the mystery. The association has contributed to historical research that has helped us understand the bigger picture of the tale, but the remaining ciphers have not been cracked and no treasure has been found.
Some research has led many people to believe that the Beale Ciphers and the entire story are actually a hoax. What’s lead to that belief? Many of the clues involve inaccuracies found in Ward’s pamphlet, such as an incorrect date for when Morriss became the innkeeper at the Washington Hotel and using words that weren’t found in print until many years after the publication.
Additionally, there is no solid evidence that a Thomas Beale lived in Virginia at that time, neither is there documentation of his expedition out west. Finally, the accuracy of the reproduced ciphers cannot be verified because the original Beale Ciphers were reportedly lost in a fire at the Virginia Job Print plant.
Many skeptics believe that Ward created the entire legend, which he then wrote into a pamphlet and proceeded to sell it. In fact, studies on the word usage, grammar, and punctuation of the original papers and the pamphlet suggest that they were written by the same individual. Further, some believe he drew inspiration from several popular works of fiction. One of these is Edgar Allan Poe’s story The Gold Bug, which also included cryptograms. Another stems from a Kentucky legend about a man who discovered a silver mine. Other people believe that Ward was in fact a Freemason, drawing parallels in his story to several Masonic rites.
A computer study of the two undeciphered messages conducted in 1971 concluded that they contain cyclic patterns in the numbers, suggesting that they are encoded in a similar fashion to the decoded second cipher.
Though evidence suggests the Beale Ciphers are nothing more than an elaborate hoax, there are still cryptographers and treasure hunters who continue to work hard at cracking the code. Even if the treasure doesn’t actually exist, they’re spurred on by the thrill of solving a riddle that has baffled so many people.
Fortunately, you don’t need to decode anything to get your own piece of treasure. You can add value to your bullion portfolio with the 2017 American Gold Eagle coins, which come in a variety of weights.
What do you think about the Beale Ciphers? Would you dedicate your time to attempting to decode messages that might actually be fake?
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