The Beale Ciphers are more than a map to buried gold. They are a puzzle of numbers that has tested the minds of codebreakers for almost two centuries. The papers are said to describe the location, the contents, and the heirs of a large treasure hidden in Bedford County, Virginia. Their story combines a secret, a hidden fortune, and a riddle that has resisted nearly every attempt at decryption. Here we look at the legend, at what the ciphers are, and at why many people still believe in them. The Papers and the Innkeeper According to the story, a man named Thomas Beale left a set of sealed papers with an innkeeper in 1822. The papers were three ciphers, which means three coded messages written as strings of numbers. The innkeeper was instructed to open the papers only after a certain time had passed without word from Beale. The story was published years later, and it became one of the most famous treasure legends in America. The name of the innkeeper and the details of the story ha...