The Beale Ciphers

In 1822, a man calling himself Thomas Beale walked out of a Lynchburg, Virginia hotel and disappeared, leaving behind a locked iron box and a promise of buried treasure worth over sixty million dollars today. Inside were three coded pages. One of them broke, using the Declaration of Independence as the key, and it described a stone vault packed with gold and silver in the hills of Bedford County. The other two never have. For a hundred and forty years, cryptanalysts, treasure hunters, and statisticians have tried every key they can think of, and what they've found instead raises a very different question: was this ever a real treasure at all, or one of the most patient hoaxes in American history?