The Beale ciphers are three encrypted messages. One of them is said to describe where a buried treasure of gold, silver, and jewels is hidden. This treasure is believed to be worth more than $60 million as of January 2025. The first message remains unsolved and is thought to give the location of the treasure. The second message has been solved and explains what items are in the treasure. The third message is also unsolved and is believed to list the names of the treasure’s owners and their family members.

The story of the ciphers comes from an 1867 pamphlet titled The Beale Papers. It describes how a man named Thomas J. Beale buried treasure in a secret place in Bedford County, Virginia, around 1820. He left a box with the encrypted messages to a local innkeeper named Robert Morriss and then disappeared. Twenty-three years later, Morriss opened the box and later gave the three messages to a friend before he died. The friend tried to decode the messages for 20 years and succeeded with only one, which described the treasure and its general location. He published all three messages in a pamphlet that was sold in the 1880s.

Since the pamphlet was published, many people have tried to decode the remaining messages and find the treasure. However, no one has succeeded. Some people believe the story is fake. For example, a 1980 article by cryptographer Jim Gillogly and a 1982 study by Joe Nickell questioned the existence of Thomas J. Beale. Nickell used historical records and noted that some words in the messages, like “stampeding,” were not used in the 1800s. He also found that the writing style matched a man named James B. Ward, who published a pamphlet in 1885 that introduced the Beale ciphers. Nickell argued that the story is fictional and may be based on a secret group called the Freemasons. James B. Ward was a member of this group.

Background

A pamphlet published in 1885, called The Beale Papers, is the source of this story. The treasure was said to have been found by an American named Thomas J. Beale in the early 1800s. He discovered it in a gold and silver mine located north of Nuevo México (New Mexico), which was then part of the Spanish province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México. This area is likely in present-day Colorado. According to the pamphlet, Beale led a group of 30 men from Virginia who found the rich mine while hunting buffalo. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of gold and silver. Beale was then asked to transport the metals to Virginia and hide them in a safe place. After making several trips to prepare the hiding spot, Beale wrote three secret messages: one describing where the treasure was buried, one describing the treasure itself, and one listing the names of the treasure’s owners and their relatives. The treasure’s location is traditionally believed to be near Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia.

Beale placed the secret messages and other papers in an iron box. In 1822, he gave the box to an innkeeper named Robert Morriss in Lynchburg. Beale told Morriss not to open the box unless he or one of his men failed to return from their journey within 10 years. A few months later, Beale sent a letter from St. Louis, promising Morriss that a friend in St. Louis would send the key to solve the secret messages. However, the key never arrived. In 1845, Morriss opened the box and found two letters written by Beale, along with three pages of secret messages labeled "1," "2," and "3." Morriss could not solve the secret messages and later gave the box and its contents to an unnamed friend.

The friend used a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence as a key to solve the second secret message, which described the buried treasure. The friend could not solve the other two messages and eventually shared the letters and secret messages with the public in a pamphlet called The Beale Papers. This pamphlet was published in 1885 by another friend named James B. Ward.

James B. Ward is not the same person as the unnamed friend. Ward is rarely mentioned in local records, except that a man with his name owned the home where Sarah Morriss, Robert Morriss’s wife, died at age 77 in 1863. Ward is also recorded as becoming a Master Mason in 1863.

The images below, copied from the pamphlet, show the original line breaks for easy comparison. In the second secret message, the original mistakes in the cipher are marked in red.

• Beale's first secret message
• Beale's second secret message (the one that was solved)
• Beale's third secret message

Deciphered message

The plaintext of paper number 2 reads:

The second cipher can be solved easily using an adjusted version of the United States Declaration of Independence, but some changes are needed. To solve it, find the word that matches the number (for example, the first number is 115, and the 115th word in the Declaration of Independence is "instituted"), and use the first letter of that word ("I" in this example).

Beale used a version of the Declaration of Independence that was slightly different from the original, and he made mistakes in numbering the words. To extract the hidden message, the following five changes must be made to the original text:

• After word 154 ("institute") and before word 157 ("laying"), add one word. The pamphlet adds "a" before "new government."
• After word 240 ("invariably") and before word 246 ("design"), remove one word (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"), remove ten words (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"), remove one word (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"), remove one word (probably "their"). The pamphlet’s numbering has eleven words between the labels for 670 and 680.

• 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, even though they are shown as one word.
• The first letter of the 811th word of the modified text ("fundamentally") is always used as a "y."
• The first letter of the 1005th word of the modified text ("have") is always used as an "x."

Finally, in the decoded text, there are six errors, likely caused by incorrect copying 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 differences in the Declaration of Independence 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 (this 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. Other small changes likely have no effect.

Many versions of the Declaration of Independence have been printed, with different changes to paragraphing, word choices, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation.

The lack of clear images of the original ciphers, combined with the large number of numerals, has caused some numerals to be printed incorrectly or left out 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}:

The treasure’s total weight is about three tons, as described in the inventory of the second cryptogram. This includes approximately 35,052 troy ounces of gold, 61,200 troy ounces of silver (worth about US$96.3 million and US$1.8 million, respectively, in October 2024), and jewels worth around US$220,000 in 2017.

Authenticity

There has been a lot of discussion about whether the two remaining ciphertexts are real or fake. An early researcher, Carl Hammer of Sperry UNIVAC, used computers from the late 1960s to study the ciphers. He found that while the ciphers were not well made, the two undeciphered ones did not have the patterns expected from random numbers. They likely contain readable text. Other questions remain about the pamphlet's story, which has parts that seem unlikely. These parts are based mostly on indirect evidence and what people say.

Items that raise doubt about the ciphers include:

• The second message, which describes the treasure, has been solved, but the others have not. This might suggest a plan to keep people interested in solving the other two, which could be impossible. The second message also refers to the first one, even though Beale supposedly wanted to send Morris a key for all three ciphers. The pamphlet originally cost 50 cents, which was expensive for the time (about $17.92 in 2025), and the author said he wanted it to be widely shared.
• If the modified Declaration of Independence is used as a key for the first cipher, it creates long sequences of letters in order, such as abcdefghiijklmmnohpp. The American Cryptogram Association says the chance of such patterns appearing by accident is less than one in a hundred million million. While it is possible the first cipher was meant to show people they were "on the right track" for other ciphers, this would be unnecessary, since the second message already proves the key works.
• Later cryptographers say the two unsolved ciphers have patterns that suggest they are not English texts. These sequences are not random, as Carl Hammer noted, and are not real English words.
• Some question why Beale would write three different ciphers (with at least two keys) for what is essentially one message, especially if he wanted to help Morris's family find the treasure. The third cipher does not seem to have enough space to list 30 people's next of kin.
• Robert Morriss, as described in the pamphlet, is said to have run the Washington Hotel in 1820, but records show he did not start there until at least 1823.
• A common story in fiction is finding a treasure map, like in "The Gold-Bug" by Edgar Allan Poe or "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Many people have tried to solve the remaining ciphers. Most used other historical texts as keys, such as the Magna Carta, the Bible, or the U.S. Constitution, but none have worked so far. Solving the ciphers might depend on luck, like finding the right book key if they are book ciphers. Even the best experts have failed. Beale might have used a document he wrote himself or random characters, making further attempts useless.

A look at 1810 U.S. census records shows two people named Thomas Beale, one in Connecticut and one in New Hampshire. However, records for seven states, one territory, the District of Columbia, and 18 Virginia counties are missing. The 1820 census lists three Thomas Beales, one in Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia. The Virginia one has a middle initial "K." Records for three states and one territory are also missing.

Before 1850, the U.S. Census only recorded the names of household heads, not others in the household. Beale, if he existed, might have lived with someone else. A man named "Thomas Beall" appears in the St. Louis postmaster's list of 1820. The Beale Papers say Beale sent a letter from St. Louis in 1822. The 1820 census lists 11 Thomas Bealls, seven in Maryland and one each in Georgia, Ohio, Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

Some researchers, like Robert Ward, think Edgar Allan Poe wrote the pamphlet. Poe was interested in ciphers and advertised his skills in a newspaper. He used a cipher in his 1843 story "The Gold-Bug." He lived in Richmond, Virginia, around the time Beale supposedly met Morriss. However, Poe died in 1849, before the Beale Papers were published in 1885. The pamphlet also mentions the American Civil War, which began in 1861. A study by William Poundstone found Poe's writing style is very different from the pamphlet's.

Another way to test the ciphers is to look at number patterns in different bases. For example, the frequency of the last digit in each number is not the same in all ciphers. In base 10, the solved cipher has uneven digit frequencies, while the unsolved ones have even distributions. This suggests the solved

Search attempts

Although the truth of The Beale Papers has not been proven, treasure hunters continue to search for the hidden vault. The idea that buried treasure exists in Bedford County has led to many digging trips using shovels and other tools to look for possible locations. For over 100 years, people have been arrested for trespassing and digging without permission; some groups, like a team from Pennsylvania in the 1990s, were involved in these activities.

Several searches took place at the top of Porter's Mountain. One in the late 1980s was allowed by the landowner, but only if any treasure found was divided equally between the landowner and the hunters. However, the group discovered only Civil War artifacts. The value of these items was enough to cover the costs of the trip and equipment rental, resulting in no financial gain or loss.

Media attention

The story has appeared in many TV documentaries, including the UK's Mysteries series, a part of the seventh special of Unsolved Mysteries, and the 2011 Declaration of Independence episode of the History Channel show Brad Meltzer's Decoded. There are also several books and a lot of online interest. The Beale Cipher Association published a newsletter from 1979 to 1996. Simon Singh's 1999 book The Code Book discusses the Beale cipher mystery in one of its chapters.

In 2010, an award-winning animated short film called The Thomas Beale Cipher was made about the ciphers. In 2014, the National Geographic TV show The Numbers Game called the Beale ciphers one of the strongest passwords ever created. In 2015, the UKTV series Myth Hunters (also known as Raiders of the Lost Past) had an episode in season three about the topic. A February 2015 episode of Expedition Unknown showed host Josh Gates visiting Bedford to investigate the Beale ciphers and search for the treasure. In 2024, Dave Howard from Popular Mechanics wrote an article that included interviews with researchers working to solve the Beale ciphers.

In the film The Imitation Game, John Cairncross used a Beale cipher to send secret messages to the Soviet Union about Enigma intercepts at Bletchley Park. Hugh Alexander discovered that the key to the cipher was based on the Bible verse Matthew 7:7: "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you."