In a hunt that began last Thursday, Mr. Delonas's group has been given one year to search for the gold. The mystery boils down to a single question: Was Milton (Doc) Noss telling the truth, or just a tall tale? Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. Rare Gold Nuggets. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. Mr. Bailey claimed that given a helicopter and a half-hour, he could find 292 gold bars. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. The rate of this tax varies from 5.125% to 8.8675% depending on where the business is . All four men Fiege, Thomas Berlett, Ken Prather and Milleadge Wessel were, at the time of their find, employees at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Becoming desperate for cash, Doc and a man named Joseph Andregg transported gold bars, coins, jewels, and artifacts into Arizona, selling them on the black market. Near the bottom, he encountered a huge boulder hanging from the ceiling, almost blocking his way. Going public with information about the gold stored in Victorio Peak or removed from it, however, is something that people familiar with the subject are generally reluctant to do. Suddenly, a host of people surfaced to lay claims on the legendary gold treasure. Sensing a double-cross by Ryan, Doc dug up the gold that was to be used in the exchange and reburied it in a place where Ryan was unaware. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. Doc mentioned nothing of his find to the group, choosing instead to return to the site a couple of days later with Ova. The caverns are located in and around Victorio Peak, in a remote, rugged section of south-central New Mexico. That I walked over to E.M. Guthrie on this occasion in 1972, greeted him, and invited him out to dinner with myself and Frank Foss. We are a research and service division of: Placer gold deposits were an important source of gold in New Mexico prior to 1902, but placer production after 1902 has been minor. Two years later, he married Violet Lena Boles, which would further complicate ownership of the treasure rights for years to come. With legal ownership established, Noss began to work the claim openly, but he also became increasingly paranoid, hiding the gold bars all over the desert. This Nevada Gold Mine Produces Amazing Crystalline Gold Nuggets! Ryan was charged with murder but was later acquitted. Legend says he sent a palace full of valuables to the United States to be hidden. The 1.93-kilogram bar was found . Anyone can read what you share. The family declines to discuss the incident. Doc thought that he had discovered an old abandoned mineshaft. [5] The partnership conducted unsuccessful searches until March 1996, when the Army suspended their access. He estimated the total amount of gold coming from the peak at a staggering 96 million troy ounces, worth, at $320 an ounce, nearly $31 billion. According to Atkins son, John, Holmes possessed key materials which were being used to press the Army into allowing Atkins and Holmes access to Victorio Peak. He has recruited friends and investors to form the Ova Noss Family Partnership, named for his late grandmother, that is financing the new search. Background research into the enormous wealth contained in the caverns of Victorio Peak revealed many eyewitness reports of the gold. The sources of this threat, according to the man who relayed the threat to Scott, were two agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. However, with the discovery of gold, the treaty was broken in 1878, and Victorio went on the warpath. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. As a child, he said he remembered his grandmother, Ova Noss, talking about it ceaselessly. A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City reveals it was part of the plunder Spanish conquerors tried to carry away as they fled the Aztec capital . Neither man being familiar with laws governing the discovery of treasure on a military base, Fiege went to the Judge Advocates Office at Holloman Air Force Base to confer with Colonel Sigmund I. Gasiewicz. With so many options available, APMEX has made it easy to find the right Gold bar for your collection or portfolio. This theory explains the thousands of gold bars, antiquities, and artifacts dating more than 100 years later. As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. These materials, including tape-recorded sessions wherein Lyndon Johnson discussed the disposition of some of the gold bars on his ranch, disappeared from Holmes office at the time of his death in February 1977. Estimates vary on the number of bars removed, ranging up to 350 or so. Trace element analysis of placer gold can be used as a valuable exploration tool in order to determine the original deposit source and locating lode gold deposits. After 35 years of localized dispute, the Great White Sands Missile Range Lost Gold Treasure Affair has blossomed into a national mystery. Peak and look, accompanied by the missile range commander, Maj. Gen. John G. Shinkle, military pblicemen and Treasury agents. They would have the proper persons on guard duty., Possession of gold by private American citizens was illegal under federal law throughout the period of the Johnson presidency. Another source, who asked to remain unidentified, stated that he had personally interviewed several men who had brought a large load of the peaks gold to Johnsons ranch. He was also known to take prisoners back to the Basin, where he subjected them to elaborate torture tests before killing them. The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. I've heard that story at least 500 times. The 1.93-kilogram bar was found by a construction worker during excavations for a new building along the Alameda, a picturesque park in the heart of the Mexican capital. They dug under it, and Berlett and Fiege moved past it for another 100 to 125 feet, coming eventually to what Berlett described as a small cavern, approximately eight feet wide by 10 or 12 feet long. CNN Almost four decades ago, a gold bar was found on land that used to be Aztec ruins in Mexico. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his Babe, disappearing into the desert, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed. There are four major stories on the treasure's origin, said Mr. And for good reason. Too much evidence supports the treasure, including photographs, affidavits, and relics held by the Noss family. On each trip, Doc would retrieve two gold bars and as many artifacts as he could carry. This time, the military began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak. However, White Sands issued an edict expressly forbidding them to return to the base. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. However, the business often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the selling price. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. However, disputing the military claim, New Mexico officials stated that they leased only the lands surface to the military. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. The Mystery Of The Lost Victorio Peak Treasure, a group of researchers who published their findings. The flamboyant lawyer F. Lee Bailey once said he represented 50 unnamed clients. The night before his death, perhaps sensing that a business deal was going sour, Doc enlisted the aid of a cowboy named Tony Jolley to shuffle the locations of various stashes of the bars. A number of sources also independently named Major General John G. Shinkle, the commander of White Sands Missile Range from June 1960 to July 1962, as knowing about the movement of tons of gold from Victorio Peak. At one end of the chamber, the shaft continued downward. The Lost Padre Gold Mine in New Mexico. Alleged gold cache in the U.S. state of New Mexico, "Hunt for Fabulous Cache of Gold Lands in Court", "Following 1937 Story of Buried Gold, Family Searches New Mexico's Sands", "Seekers of fabled southern N.M. treasure sue Army", "Authors re-examine Victorio Peak storyand think gold really may be there", "Treasure or Treachery? Part II: The bizarre history of Victorio Peak continues to unravel as the Army, the Treasury Department and the Secret Service authorize a top secret operation aimed at locating and bringing out the gold. We wanted to lay the matter to rest once and for all, said General Shinkle, who is now tetireil and lives in Cocoa Beach, Fla. We gave him a lie detector test beforehand and it was apparentiy, successful but he couldn't find anything.. After the discovery, Fiege told several people that he had caved in the roof and walls to make it look like the tunnel ended. But in 1977, the Army agreed to allow some searchers with competing claims, including Mrs. Noss, to search the grounds. Kathy Weiser-Alexander/Legends of America, updated November 2021. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. They insisted they were photographed, finger printed, harassed and not al lowed to go near the search area. This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. No one in the provost marshals office to whom Porter talked would admit to knowing anything about the gold, and he was warned by the provost marshal that any future trespassing would be dealt with severely. When Docs story eventually hit the headlines, scholars began speculating on how the enormous treasure could have come to be stashed inside Victorio Peak. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. Many hieroglyphs have been found in New Mexico near his home, according to treasure hunters from the area. Immediately reporting the activity to Babe Noss, Babe contacted Oscar Jordan with the New Mexico State Land Office, who, in turn, contacted the Judge Advocates Office at White Sands. In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. In 1828, large placer deposits were found in the Ortiz Mountains in Santa Fe County (Old Placers district, DIS187), which began one of the earliest gold rushes in the western United States. They come in a variety of weights, fineness and designs. They had trekked in from Hot Springs, New Mexico, a town since renamed Truth or Consequences. Doc returned with a gold bar, presented it to his wife, Babe, and the couple soon dedicated their lives to exploring Victorio Peak, living in a tent at the base of the mountain in search of treasure. Unable to sell the gold bars on the open market, Noss was stymied but continued to work steadily to remove the treasure. In a four-page confidential report entitled Field Examination of Noss Mining Claims, Hembrillo District, Herkenhoff recorded a description: Dr. The skeletons hands were bound behind its back apparently, the person had been deliberately left there to die. But in August, the Army turned him down, saying he deserves no more favored treatment than some 300 others who ask each year for permission to enter the missile range to search. There wasn't much known about a 4-pound gold bar discovered during construction work in Mexico City nearly 40 years ago, but now experts are calling the precious metal an Aztec relic. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. Representative Harold Runnels, a Democrat whose district includes the White Sands range, has proposed a joint Federalstate search for the treasure. The family believes that as much as 100 tons of gold, which would be worth $1.25 billion at today's closing price of $358.90 an ounce on the Commodity Exchange in New York, remains hidden in. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. Now, cleared to go by an act of Congress, the best-equipped search ever is under way with $1 million in backing from the descendants and some investors. Leon Trabuco brought Mexico's gold to the US He buried 16 tons of gold bars in New Mexico CASE DETAILS Farmington, New Mexico, 1933. Ova convinced Doc to return to the big cave and bring one of the heavy bars back up. Only four districts have each yielded more than 100,000 oz of placer gold production: Elizabethtown-Baldy (DIS019), Hillsboro (DIS197), Old Placers (DIS187), and New Placers (DIS186). Letha Guthrie, Ovas eldest daughter from a previous marriage, described the next few years as a very happy time for the Noss family, one of simple, hard work with a bright, limitless future. The cast of characters ranges from John W. Dean 3d to Geronimo and the vocabulary is marked by double as a prefixas in doublecross, doubletalk and doubledealing. Most deposits are thin and less than 45 ft below the surface, but thicker deposits are found in the Elizabethtown-Baldy district (up to 275 ft) and in the Rio Grande Valley district (up to 370 ft). In 1958, Leonard V. Fiege, then an Air Force captain stationed at nearby Holloman Air: Force Base, and three other men, contended that while deer hunting they found a cave filled with gold bars. Ova Noss, Leonard Fiege and others dont listen when they are told to shut up and they pay the price. The cave was covering a small tunnel, originally thought to be an abandoned mineshaft. He used too much dynamite, and the cave collapsed, sealing in the treasure. Reportedly the military was able to penetrate one of the caves and inventory the contents. The military claim stemmed from a statement made by New Mexico officials on November 14, 1951, which withdrew prospecting, entry, location, and purchase under the mining laws, reserving the land for military use only. Dangerous unexploded 20mm shells from Phantom jet target practice dot the range, the Army insists. ): GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, USA, Luterbach, T. and McLemore, V.T., 2016, Trace element analysis of placer gold samples: Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, 2016 Annual meeting. After telling her what he had seen and shown her the loot, she insisted he go back into the mine for one of the iron bars. The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. We took 90 bars stacked by a mine shaft at Victorio Peak and reburied them 10 in a pile scattered throughout the basin with the exception of 30 bars that we buried in a grassy flat near the road we came out on.. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. Yet that is exactly what happened to Milton "Doc" Noss, a traveling doctor who discovered an extensive cave network laden with gold and historical artifacts or so he claimed. A new chemical analysis of a large gold bar found under a Mexico City street in 1981 has shed light on its centuries-old origins. Ferdig, adding, The trouble with treasure stories is that there's always a little truth in them.. Three days later the Nosses went back, and in the months that followed, Noss hauled gold bars, one at a time, with enormous effort up the narrow passageway, according to Mrs. Noss's daughter, Mrs. Letha Guthrie of Clovis, who said she was also there part of the, time. The Victorio Peak treasure (also seen in print as the Treasure of Victorio Peak or Treasure of San Andres) describes a cache of gold reportedly found inside Victorio Peak in 1937 in southern New Mexico . From that moment onward, every attempt of Babes to clear the rubble from the plugged shaft met with a military escort out of the area. In 1939, he hired a mining engineer to try to open a wider passage into Victorio Peak, but the attempt was disastrous and there was a massive cave-in. On the walls were drawings, some painted and others chiseled, that appeared to have been made by Indians. That I had known E.M. Guthrie for about three years prior to this meeting and knew him to be the husband of Letha Guthrie, stepdaughter of Milton Ernest Doc Noss. He bolted from the Mescalero reservation in 1879 and camped near Victoria Peak while plundering the countryside and raiding Wells Fargo stagecoaches. American and foreign car makers have rented land at the installation to test new air bags. Edward Atkins of Decatur, Illinois, had been a claimant to the peaks gold and was vigorously pursuing that claim via attorney Darrell Holmes of Athens, Georgia, when Holmes died under mysterious circumstances. The Army, which controls the missile range, insists there is no treasure and has never been any. Another source confirmed the manner and the circumstances of E.M. Guthries death, noting that it was listed as just a natural death, but hed been worked over with a baseball bat. This source said that he had hired a team of experienced investigators to dig into Guthries death and more than 30 other deaths in connection with a massive, continuing cover-up of the removal of gold from Victorio Peak. Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. On August 5, Fiege and his party returned to Victorio Peak, accompanied by the commander of the Missile Range, a secret service agent, and 14 military police. Did they even exist at all? The affidavit states, in part: In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough [sic] poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. Then, in 1942 or 1943, she isn't sure, he tried to blast the tunnel bigger in order to haul up more gold bars at one time. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each.! And has never been any Doc to return to the site a couple of days later Ova! 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