Legend says he sent a palace full of valuables to the United States to be hidden. Ever since then, driven by a desire to become fabulously wealthy, Mr. Noss himself, his descendants, investors and soldiers at White Sands Missile Range, which includes Victorio Peak, have gone in time after time searching for treasure, but have always come up empty. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. Jan 20, 2020 Ian Harvey. Reportedly the military was able to penetrate one of the caves and inventory the contents. The buried cache was said to have been stolen from the Chihauhua-Spanish by the Indians during the Indian uprisings. ): 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. If nothing else, he said, an exhaustive search would lay to rest a question that has driven the family for more than 50 years. After some airmen from a nearby air force base claimed they found some gold at Victorio Peak, the Army and Secret Service began a secret search in 1961. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. He was also known to take prisoners back to the Basin, where he subjected them to elaborate torture tests before killing them. In a special act of Congress passed in 1989, the Hembrillo Basin was unlocked for Terry Delonas and the Noss heirs; however, nothing has been found. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. November 16, 2015. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. On the night of March 4, 1949, I went with Doc Noss and dug up 20 bars of gold at a windmill in the desert east of Hatch, New Mexico, and reburied them in the basin where Victorio Peak is. The buying entity was a Middle Eastern principal, Shriver said. 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. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Victorio_Peak_treasure&oldid=1133710645, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 15 January 2023, at 04:22. 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. 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. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. Although the originals have never been recovered, a copy of one of the documents proved to be a translation from Pope Pius III. Large movements of bullion from the peak went on for nearly a decade, with the largest single removal of gold occurring in 1976, according to Bill Shriver. Many hieroglyphs have been found in New Mexico near his home, according to treasure hunters from the area. Using ropes for support and guided by his flashlights wavering beam, Doc Noss descended a series of interconnecting chambers which led downward for 186 feet. Gold Bar Found Beneath Mexico City was Loot from Cortes' Aztec Retreat. A priest named LaRue at Durango in northern Mexico was looking after the soldier who told the priest . It was on Nov. 7, we had 11 families on a hunting trip and I was doing the cooking, she said in an interview at her daughter's home in Clovis, N. M. She said her husband, called Doc, had come back, to the camp that night and secretly told her of lowering himself with ropes down a crevice on Victoria Peak into caverns laden with coins, jewelry, guns, swords, letters, 27 human skeletons, and hundreds of metal bars that turned out to be gold. This writer conducted extensive interviews with Thomas Berlett. Under the direction of Mr. Delonas, the searchers have been analyzing their findings in a temporary office at Las Cruces, about 25 miles south of Victoria Peak. 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. Chester Stout, for example, a retired Army sergeant, traced the removal of two large truckloads of gold from Victorio Peak, but later had to move out of New Mexico; his life was threatened because, as he was told, he knew too much.. 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. [5] During the 1970s, lawyer F. Lee Bailey represented clients who claimed to know where the treasure was located. A jury ruled that Mr. Ryan had acted in self-defense. As far as I'm concerned, I've got more gold in my upper bridge than is in those mountains., The center of interest is Victoria Peak, a 1,500foot hill in the San Andres Mountains on missile range land about 25 miles northeast of Las Cruces. According to this source, a B-24 was used to transport at least seven loads of the peaks gold, with up to 20 tons of gold moving in each load. Army spokesmen have consistently dismissed all reports of Victorio Peak gold as rumors. An apparent propaganda campaign, in fact, has been conducted for many years by the Army in order to dispel these reports and to keep treasure seekers away from the missile range. Suddenly, a host of people surfaced to lay claims on the legendary gold treasure. 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. Doc mentioned nothing of his find to the group, choosing instead to return to the site a couple of days later with Ova. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. 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. On the walls were drawings, some painted and others chiseled, that appeared to have been made by Indians. Neither the Denver Mint nor the Federal records center in Denver, which has copies of gold receints for that period, could find the Noss receipt, spokesmen there said. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. The economic potential of placer deposits in New Mexico is unknown and most known economic placers in the state have been worked. Representative Harold Runnels, a Democrat whose district includes the White Sands range, has proposed a joint Federalstate search for the treasure. 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. Acquitted on grounds of selfdefense, Mr. Ryan testified that Doc had promised him 51 bars of gold in return for his $27,000 investment. The gold was supposedly removed from the cave and sent to Fort Knox. Mr. Noss's ex-wife was barred from searching in the 1950's, when the Army extended the White Sands borders to include Victorio Peak. That after he had been beaten to death, according to the information I received, his body was put back into his car, the car was doused with kerosene or gasoline, and then set aflame.. His wife and his two school-age children had also abruptly left. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. The charges concerning LBJs involvement included the following: According to this same source, Victorio Peak was just like a private vault to certain high-ranking people. They would go in periodically and get what they wanted. His main source of income cut off, and his marriage to Babe already deteriorated, Noss was desperate to sell his remaining gold bars on the black market. Years later, in 1946, Doc discussed his exploration with Gordon E. Herkenhoff, field representative of the New Mexico State Land Office.1. In December 1961, General Shinkle shut down the operation and excluded anyone from entering the base who was not directly engaged in the missile research activities. Although a suitable path fit for wagons couldn't be found, traces of gold were found somewhere close to Silver City to the north. 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. The soldiers, Airman First Class Thomas Berlett and Captain Leonard V. Fiege said they had found approximately 100 gold bars weighing between 40 and 80 pounds each in a small cavern. [3][b], A 1961 search by the U.S. Armythe peak lies within White Sands Missile Rangewas stopped following a request to state officials by Noss's first wife, Ova. The rate of this tax varies from 5.125% to 8.8675% depending on where the business is . He estimated there were thousands of these bars, each weighing over 40 pounds stacked against a wall. Case At least one close relative was convinced that Atkins death was not accidental and that it was directly related to his getting too close to the true story of Victorio Peak. Following 1937 Story of Buried Gold, Family Searches New Mexico's Sands, https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/29/us/following-1937-story-of-buried-gold-family-searches-new-mexico-s-sands.html. 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. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. Begrudgingly, he did so. Mr. Koury asserted that the General first denied the search was on but admitted it later when sworn statements from the spies were produced. She called her lawyer, Philip Koury, of Kansas City, who phoned General Shinkle. Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. Victorio Peak, a craggy outcropping of rock barely 500 feet tall, lies in the center of a desert lake known as the Hembrillo Basin in New Mexico. Ova convinced Doc to return to the big cave and bring one of the heavy bars back up. By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times. [7], Theories abound on the origins of the alleged treasure, including that it was pilfered from Mexico during the reign of the Austrian puppet Emperor Maximilian, or through collusion between Pancho Villa and Germany prior to World War I.[8]. Unable to sell the gold bars on the open market, Noss was stymied but continued to work steadily to remove the treasure. Babe then began a regular correspondence with the military requesting permission to work her claim, but she was always denied. On the night of September 1, 1968, Porter drove to the peak with a friend and a civilian security guard from White Sands Missile Range named Clarence McDonald. Berlett and Fiege formed a corporation to protect what they had found and make a formal application to enter White Sands for a search and retrieval of the gold. Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. Shriver also said that he had copies of other presidential messages, several initialed by LBJ, dealing with the clandestine, illegal removal of the gold. [5] The partnership conducted unsuccessful searches until March 1996, when the Army suspended their access. A gold bar found in a Mexico City park in 1981 was part of the Aztec treasure looted by Hernan Cortes and the Spanish conquistadors 500 years ago, a new study says. I know, they all claim they can go right to if in two hours, said Bernert Ferdig, a retired civil servant who was in charge of real estate at the White Sands base for 15 years. I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. Further, they stated that underground wealth, in whatever form it took, belonged to the state or any legal license holders. 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. There were thousands of them, covered with old, dusty buffalo hides. Gold Bars Available from APMEX Gold bullion bars are an investor favorite. Two years later, he married Violet Lena Boles, which would further complicate ownership of the treasure rights for years to come. Rare Gold Nuggets. In 2019, evidence to support the theory that the gold never left Mexico was revealed when archaeologists confirmed that a gold bar found in 1981 was from Montezuma's treasure. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. Still another source reported knowledge of aircraft movements of the gold from Chihuahua to Vancouver, British Columbia, during the period of Johnsons presidency. The Lue Map has very strange symbols. According to members of the family, there would have been more, but Docs work was abruptly and unexpectedly brought to a halt in August 1939 when a dynamite blast, set to enlarge a narrow passage, instead caved the passage in, sealing off the main cavern. Treasure Net Forum He supposedly told his wife: "We can make John D. Rockefeller look like a tramp. 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 . Returning through the main cavern, he noticed an immense stack of metal bars off to one side. General Shinkle finally had enough and ordered everyone out. Its occasional visitors included hunting parties, and Doc Noss and his wife, Ova, were on one such expedition in search of deer. 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. 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.. He said I'll get F.D.R. In 1981, a construction worker discovered the gold bar, weighing 4.25 lbs. 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. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Decades of Searching. One story involves a Jesuit missionary named Padre LaRue whose band of 40 gold mining families was massacred in a punitive raid by Spanish soldiers in the early eighteenhundreds. 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. New Mexico does not have a sales tax. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. He has recruited friends and investors to form the Ova Noss Family Partnership, named for his late grandmother, that is financing the new search. As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. In 1981, a worker in Mexico City found a gold bar just north of Alameda Centralthe oldest public park in the Americasduring the construction of a bank. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. Patterson, Don Breech, Edgar F. Foreman, Leo D. OConnell, Eppie Montoya and B.D. ", According to the family, Mr. Noss took some gold bars when he found the cavern in 1937, and planned to return for the rest. Doc was trying to obey the law but they grabbed our gold, Mrs. Noss said, He blew up. According to a close relative interviewed by Freedom, Shriver was murdered. The relative said that Shriver was beaten up in California, beaten about the kidneys and the head and subsequently died from his injuries. Ryan hinted that if Noss did not reveal the whereabouts of the gold, Doc would not live to enjoy it. But Doc Noss cared little about the historical value of the treasures inside Victorio Peak, mostly ignoring the pouches, packs, and artifacts. Native gold and electrum occurs with quartz, magnetite, ilmenite, amphiboles, pyroxenes, pyrite, zircon, garnet, rutile, and a variety of other heavy minerals. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. An affidavit dated October 28, 1961, was signed to this effect, also claiming to have seen a military jeep and a weapons carrier on the mountain. Our Mineral Museum However, the business often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the selling price. To further complicate things, rumors swirled about various factions smuggling. Victorio used the entire Hembrillo Basin as his stronghold, refusing to live on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, where the government wanted to banish him. The peak, named after a 19th century Apache war chief, apparently served as a repository for immense quantities of gold mined centuries ago by Spaniards and Indians and smelted into tens of thousands of crudely formed bars. The skeletons hands were bound behind its back apparently, the person had been deliberately left there to die. Over the weekend, he said, someone found the chest he had buried with gold nuggets, coins, gems and artifacts. All attempts failed, leaving him an embittered and angry man, which caused problems in his marriage. Lifting the rock, he found a hole that led straight down into the mountain. 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. In 1972, F. 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