Beale's version of the story was that he and 30 individuals of good character were seeking adventure and left on a two-year expedition for buffalo and grizzlies.

Whichever is true, a year later when Beale and his hunting cronies were preparing supper in a small ravine some 250 miles north of Santa Fe, they discovered strange stuff in the rocks. "Upon showing it to others," Beale wrote, "it was pronounced to be gold, and much excitement was the natural consequence."

In two letters, Thomas Beale described the gold, its journey back to Virginia in two wagons and its subsequent burial. He deposited the letters in an iron strongbox, and in March 1822, he left the box with his friend, Robert Morriss, for safekeeping and disappeared.

Morriss, who had fallen on hard times as the result of "heavy purchases of tobacco, at ruinous figures," was the innkeeper at the Washington Hotel in Lynchburg, Virginia.

Two months later Morriss received a mysterious letter from Beale posted on May 9 from St. Louis, then a small hunting and trading post on the western frontier.

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