Ben Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage), an archaeologist and adventurer is looking for the legendary lost treasure of the Templar Knights, spurred on by the stories he was told as a young man by his grandfather, John Adams Gates(Christopher Plummer), twenty years before. John tells Ben the secret hiding place for the treasure is encoded on the back of the Declaration of Independence, placed there by none other than the founders of the United States of America, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin