Beale's Letterbox #1 - A Mystery Letterbox in Virginia
city and county unspecified
Background - The Beale Treasure is a large quantity of gold found in modern
day New Mexico back around 1820, brought to Bedford Virginia, and buried
while it's owners went back west to mine some more. They never made it back.
While the document describing the treasure was decoded using the Declaration
of Independence as the key, the document describing the location of the
buried treasure have never been decrypted.
That's the abbreviated version of the story. Good summaries of the full
legend are at http://www.unmuseum.org/beal.htm and
http://smd173.tripod.com/Beale/ .
Different websites describing the Beale Treasure has slight variations
in the typing of the DOI. Some hyphenate one certain word or combine another
pair of words into one. Some use ampersands that make the word count
different. To get this series off to an easy, smooth start, get the
"official" version from the National Archives. After this one, you're on
your own when picking the key documents.
A Note about the Stamp - I can't carve for anything. I have a choice between
a horrid stamp image or some photographs of the area on mailing labels. I
made the untraditional choice (photos on labels). If a traditional stamp is
important to you, you'll need to pick other boxes to look for. Except for
the NMLBP (Jolly G-Man and Ladybug carved those stamps), that disclaimer
will go for anything I plant.
Happy hunting. Mike - F43 P3?
The Clue: 40, 520, 336, 148, 81, 5, 464, 49, 232, 231, 288, 117, 514, 392,
24, 326, 512, 13, 529, 141, 304, 426, 111, 398, 208, 84, 221, 279, 22, 243,
10, 251, 59, 131, 65, 635, 451, 104, 247, 2, 154, 361, 437, 555, 191, 134,
298, 380, 44, 46, 53, 409, 480, 88, 325, 179, 291, 170, 374, 281, 312, 177,
352, 21, 203, 471, 313, 286, 15, 551, 56, 249, 395, 197, 412, 370, 549, 635,
598, 95, 584, 7, 454, 239, 121, 26, 202, 213, 566, 30, 402, 4, 534, 78, 165,
115, 541, 75, 495, 377, 38, 391, 33, 388, 463, 242, 11, 330, 416, 322, 268,
457, 6, 347, 545, 572, 304, 417, 47, 300, 12, 101, 100, 477, 1, 307, 567,
35, 37