Thomas J. Beale, a leader of a group of thirty men from Virginia stumbled upon a mine of gold and silver in early 1800s while hunting buffaloes in New Mexico. They spent 18 months mining thousands of pounds of gold and silver and Beale was incharge of transporting them to Virginia and burying it in a safe location which is now believed to be in Bedford County, Virginia.
Beale made a cipher text of the location and along with some other documents he put it in an iron box and entrusted it to an innkeeper named Robert Morris in 1822 and instructed him not to open the box unless Beale or his men fails to return within 10 years. Beale or his group never returned and Morris opened the box in 1845 to find out two letters and 3 ciphertexts. Morris failed in deciphering and eventually the box ended up with a friend of him who spent 20 years trying to solve it. Usinh an edition of the US Declaration of Independence as a key he deciphered the second ciphertext which gave a description about the treasure but he was unable to solve the first and third texts. He made the letters and the ciphertexts public in a pamphlet named "Beale Papers" and it was published in 1885 by James B. Ward.
There has been numerous attempts to decipher the other two documents but so far nobody succeeded and some believe that it is a hoax but due to it's addictive quality many curious people have been in this treasure hunt for more than a century now. Especially people are motivated by the Virginia state law which says buried treasure is finders keepers even though it was discovered in a private property. For those of who are interested in more information I will put a link below to the documents in the NSA(https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/beale-papers/).
So would you rather use your tiny grey cells to decipher the two remaining documents or move your muscles and gamble on luck? 
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