The Margins
The Frames Worth Pausing On
National Treasure · 2004
The Library of Congress Card Catalog
Ben and Riley sneak through the Library of Congress and Ben dives — actual dive — into a sliding card catalog drawer to escape the FBI. The gag is built on the very real fact that, in the early 2000s, the Library of Congress still maintained physical card catalogs as a backup. The catalog cabinets are wider than they look on screen. Filming required a custom prop slightly larger than the originals, and Nicolas Cage absolutely refused a stunt double for the slide.
National Treasure · 2004
The Marshall Field's Shopping Cart
After stealing the Declaration of Independence, Ben needs to look completely un-suspicious leaving the Archives gala. He acquires the document, leaves through the rotunda, and gets into a shopping cart full of department-store bags from Marshall Field's so that he reads as a particularly nervous Christmas shopper rather than a particularly nervous national-document thief. The bags read 'Field's' on screen for about three seconds, which is the entire reason a generation of fans now associates Chicago department-store branding with treasure hunting.
Book of Secrets · 2007
Riley's Red Ferrari
After the events of National Treasure, Riley Poole gets one percent of the treasure as a finder's fee, which works out to enough money to never work again. He buys a red Ferrari. The Ferrari appears in the second film as Riley's primary mode of transportation and primary source of complaint, since it has been recently impounded for unpaid taxes. The bit pays off twice — once on its appearance, once when Riley loses it again.
Book of Secrets · 2007
Riley's 'Page 47' Book
Riley writes a tell-all book after the first film called The Templar Treasure: A History (working subtitle: National Treasure: Page 47, depending on which licensing materials you read). It sells poorly. In the second film, Riley does a book signing at which exactly one person buys a copy and asks Riley to sign it 'to my dad.' It is the kindest small humiliation the franchise contains. Riley still drives the Ferrari.
National Treasure · 2004
The Declaration's Invisible Key Map
On the back of the Declaration of Independence, in the lower-right quadrant, there is a partial pictographic map drawn in lemon juice and aged into the parchment. The map is the spatial half of the clue — the cipher provides the verbal directions, the map provides the orientation. Without both, you can decode the cipher and still walk the wrong way out of Independence Hall. Ben combines them on a kitchen-floor whiteboard at Patrick Gates' house. Patrick comments, mid-deduction, that his son has stolen the Declaration of Independence. He is not entirely wrong.
National Treasure · 2004
'I'm Going to Steal the Declaration' Plan Board
Before the Archives heist, Ben gathers Riley in front of a corkboard and lays out the entire plan with red string, photographs, and post-it notes. Riley's increasingly horrified facial expressions across the scene chart the entire emotional arc of the film. Cage performs the monologue at exactly the speed of a man who has thought about it too long; Bartha reacts at exactly the speed of a man hearing about it for the first time. The plan board itself is a real production prop and was kept by the production company; it appears, framed, in the writers' offices of several subsequent Bruckheimer films as a good-luck charm.
National Treasure · 2004
Ben's Bibliography Monologue at the National Archives
Standing in the rotunda, with Dr. Abigail Chase wholly unconvinced, Ben delivers a quiet bibliographic monologue about the Charters of Freedom — the parchment, the iron-gall ink, the time it took Timothy Matlack to engross the words by hand. The monologue is, technically, an attempt to convince Abigail that the Declaration is going to be stolen. It is also, on the level of pure performance, a love letter. It is the moment the film stops pretending to be a heist movie and reveals itself as something more honest.
Book of Secrets · 2007
Mitch Wilkinson Kidnaps Patrick Gates
Mid-second-film, Mitch Wilkinson — the antagonist, played with a controlled charm by Ed Harris — takes Patrick Gates hostage to extort cooperation from Ben. The gambit, classically, fails: Patrick is a Gates, and Gateses are not particularly leverageable. The scene includes a quiet aside from Patrick to Ben that the audience does not hear, and which has been the subject of fan speculation for twenty years. We do not know what Patrick said. Riley does not know either. We are still asking.
Book of Secrets · 2007
The Sinking of Cibola's Flooding Chamber
The climax of Book of Secrets is set inside a flooding stone chamber underneath Mount Rushmore. The chamber's flooding mechanism is a counterweight: open the door, the door's weight tips a basin, the basin pours into the chamber, the chamber fills. Someone has to hold the door open from the outside, or stay inside and hold a stone bottleneck open from below, while the rest of the party escapes. It's the moment the second film has been earning. Patrick Gates does not die, for the record. He never does.
Book of Secrets · 2007
The Resolute Desk's Twin
The Resolute desk in the Oval Office, made of timbers from the HMS Resolute, was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. What the second film proposes — and what is probably not strictly historically accurate — is that the Queen kept a twin of the desk, made from the same timbers, at Buckingham Palace. The clue chain runs through both desks, requiring Ben and Riley to break into the Oval Office and into Buckingham Palace within a single film. They do. They are not arrested in either case. We have questions.
National Treasure · 2004
Charles Carroll's Deathbed Clue
The cold open of National Treasure is Patrick Henry Gates' grandfather John Adams Gates telling young Ben the family story: Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, on his deathbed in 1832, summoning a stable boy named Thomas Gates to whisper a single sentence — 'The secret lies with Charlotte.' That sentence is the entire engine of the franchise. The opening itself is the kind of mythic-grandfather-storytelling sequence the films wear on their sleeve, and the moment that hooks every kid who watches.
National Treasure · 2004
The Trinity Church Basement / Parkington Lane
The final clue chain in National Treasure leads Ben, Riley, and Abigail to a tomb in the Trinity Church cemetery in lower Manhattan marked PARKINGTON LANE — the name itself an anagram-style cipher pointing to the chamber underneath. The crypt opens onto a series of staircases that descend underneath the church and the streets of Manhattan into a vast Templar treasure room. The actual basement of Trinity Church does exist, and it is in fact full of historical material; what it is not full of, sadly, is gold. Riley breaks character here, briefly, and just stares.
Q & A
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is this an official Disney site?
- No. This is an unofficial fan tribute. We are not affiliated with The Walt Disney Company, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, or Touchstone Pictures. Every word here is written by fans for fans.
- Why isn't the 2022 streaming series listed?
- We focus on the original two-film canon: National Treasure (2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007). The streaming series is its own thing and your mileage may vary; we wish it well, but it is not the corner of the franchise this site celebrates.
- Is the treasure real?
- Define 'real.' The Templar treasure chamber under Trinity Church is, technically, a fiction of the films. The Knights Templar are real. Charles Carroll of Carrollton is real. The Silence Dogood letters are real. The Ottendorf cipher is real. The back of the Declaration of Independence does have writing on it — though it reads, somewhat anticlimactically, 'Original Declaration of Independence, dated 4th July 1776.' Anything else, look up at your own risk.
- Will there be a National Treasure 3?
- Honestly? Status: unknown. Rumors have come and gone for nearly two decades. Jerry Bruckheimer has periodically signaled enthusiasm. Nicolas Cage has periodically signaled willingness. We are patient people. We have had to be.
- Where can I watch the films?
- Check your usual streaming services. Availability rotates and we don't want to send you to a dead link. The DVDs and Blu-rays both still exist and are surprisingly affordable in used bins.
- Can I contribute?
- Yes. This site is fan-driven. Corrections, additional lore entries, additional easter-egg observations, and pull-requests with kindness are welcome. Bring receipts; we are particular about canon.
- Who runs this site?
- A handful of fans. Page 47 changed our lives. We will not elaborate.
- Does the Declaration of Independence really have a treasure map on the back?
- It does not. What it has on the back, in fact, is the line 'Original Declaration of Independence, dated 4th July 1776' — a label, written for filing convenience by an early clerk. The lemon-juice cipher map is movie magic. We respect the magic.
- What is on Page 47?
- We don't know. Ben Gates won't say. Riley wrote a whole book that does not, on close reading, ever actually disclose what is on Page 47. We have theories. We are keeping them.
- Can I use these articles in my school project?
- Cite us, acknowledge that we are a fan project, and please do not present any of this as primary historical scholarship. The films are wonderful. The history is messier. Good projects keep both true.