He has recruited friends and investors to form the Ova Noss Family Partnership, named for his late grandmother, that is financing the new search. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. 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. 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. Lindgren, W., Graton, L.C., and Gordon, C.H., 1910, The ore deposits of New Mexico: U.S. Geological Survey, Professional Paper 68, 361 p. McLemore, V.T., 1994, Placer gold deposits in New Mexico: McLemore, V.T., Dunbar, N., Heizler, L., and Heizler, M., 2014, Geology and mineral deposits of the Orogrande mining district, Jarilla Mountains, Otero County, New Mexico: New Mexico Geological Society, Guidebook 65, p. 247-259. 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. His wife and his two school-age children had also abruptly left. 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. 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. Once again, Doc began to descend about 125 feet before the shaft again leveled off into a large natural cavern. 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. But before that happened, he must have hauled 500 or 600 bars of gold out of there and hid them, contended Mrs. Guthrie. In 1797, when the work of the Spanish missionaries had almost come to an end, there was an old Spanish soldier who was at his death bed. Even though the military refused any of Babes efforts to work her claim, it did not refuse other military personnel from exploring portions of Victorio Peak. Its occasional visitors included hunting parties, and Doc Noss and his wife, Ova, were on one such expedition in search of deer. Article content. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. However, Terry Delongas stated, Were not accusing the military of stealing the gold, but I do feel that the Department of the Army in the 1960s treated my grandmother unfairly However, weve worked very hard over the years to establish a working relationship with the military, and were certainly not going to jeopardize that by accusing them of theft.. This Massive Mine in Utah Has Produced More Gold than Most States! There were thousands of them, covered with old, dusty buffalo hides. He was overcome with joy that they might be gold. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. It would also explain the presence of the Wells Fargo bags, packsaddles, letters, and other artifacts dating to Victorios time. That while visiting Foss, a man we both knew, E.M. Guthrie, drove in to the station in a late model Ford Thunderbird. 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. Searching with 15 people at a time to try to determine the size of the cave, the group in a few weeks plans to start drilling 6-inch holes several hundred feet deep into the areas where the soundings show the cave is. He used too much dynamite, and the cave collapsed, sealing in the treasure. 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. Fearing a Federal swindle at the time, Noss returned to Victoria Peak, carrying out gold bars and hiding them, Mrs. Guthrie said. Mr. Delonas said the legend of the buried treasure obsessed the family for generations. One group of claimants took the flashlight and provided the photo as evidence that they knew the location of the treasure. Seventy-nine skeletons were described in an adjacent cavern. 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. But, she said, mint officers confiscated the five bars and gave her husband a receipt for $97,000. Noss traveled down, passing caverns with Native American designs until he reached a room with hoards of gold, jewels, pouches, documents and 27 skeletons. While Babe looked on from above, Doc inched his way down the narrow passageway into the mountain nearly 60 feet. See the article in its original context from. 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. See the article in its original context from. 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 buying entity was a Middle Eastern principal, Shriver said. 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. 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 the cavern. This was shortly before a much-publicized expedition, entitled Operation Goldfinder, took place at the site in March 1977. 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. The actual movement of the gold in this last, largest shipment, Shriver said, was done by [U.S.] military aircraft. Independent of Shriver, another source traced a number of large removals from Victorio Peak. Denied entry by the courts until legalities could determine the legal owner of the mine; Doc feared Ryan would back out of the deal. Several smaller rooms had been chiseled from the rock along one wall. All attempts failed, leaving him an embittered and angry man, which caused problems in his marriage. But when the Army; Air Force; the White House; Congressmen; New Mexico's Governor and F. Lee Bailey and dozens of other lawyers get into a single treasure saga, only confusion and rumors remain cheap. On each trip, Doc would retrieve two gold bars and as many artifacts as he could carry. Setting up camp on the desert floor at the base of Victoria Peak, the men headed into the wilderness while their wives stayed at camp. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. Six men who worked with Doc in removing the gold C.D. The gold bar had disappeared without a trace. Beyond that there is supposed to be another incline upward at about 30 degrees for some distance (40 feet as I remember it) where entrance is gained to a cave some 2700 feet long which contains many evidences that the cave was occupied as living quarters by a large group of humans for many years., The group evidently had some grisly practices, for the first thing Doc Noss encountered was a row of skeletons, 27 in all. It could finally solve the mystery. [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. Doc mentioned nothing of his find to the group, choosing instead to return to the site a couple of days later with Ova. Claimants charge the Army purposely boobytrapped the area with the shells, yet almost weekly a few fevered treasure hunters sneak through helicopter and horsemounted Army patrols 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. Ova Noss took up the search, without success. In 1961, he returned to the desert and claims to have found 10 . Kathy Weiser-Alexander/Legends of America, updated November 2021. However, with the discovery of gold, the treaty was broken in 1878, and Victorio went on the warpath. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. Reached for comment in Cocoa Beach, Florida, General Shinkle adamantly denied any knowledge of the gold and refused to comment at all on the story. 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. It has banned treasure hunters from the range since 1963. However, the Army placed a two-week time limit on the group, and they had hardly started before they were forced to leave, without finding anything. Now, researchers say the bar was. Many people believe the search points to the area of the four corners. It all started in 1937, when Mr. Noss, who practiced as a foot doctor though it was never clear if he had a medical license, returned from a hunting trip at New Mexico's Victorio Peak with startling news: he had glimpsed a hidden trove of riches, 16,000 gold bars. White Sands is the nation's largest military installation, about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The Army, which runs the missile range, required the searchers to put up $150,000 to cover the cost of environmental assessments, as well as increased security forces. The bars that Noss and his crew removed from Victorio Peak were, in general, crudely formed, indicating the use of primitive smelting processes. Victorio Peak, located in northern Dona Ana County, now lies within the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. History [ edit] Doc Noss The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. CNN Almost four decades ago, a gold bar was found on land that used to be Aztec ruins in Mexico. Mr. Noss, a traveling doctor who was known for a hot temper and an appetite for liquor, claimed that the cache consisted of Spanish artifacts and Wells Fargo chests, along with the gold. The room had been undisturbed for so long that the dust, according to Berlett, lay several inches thick. 2003-2008 Church of Scientology International. I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. Finally, others believe that the treasures were hidden by Chief Victorio, for whom the peak is named. Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico art collector, created a treasure hunt in 2010. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 2016, Trace Element Analysis of Placer Gold Samples (abstr. As a child, he said he remembered his grandmother, Ova Noss, talking about it ceaselessly. Lack of water has hampered mining in many districts and new technology, which minimizes water usage, may stimulate activity. This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. 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. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. The dispute was finally worked out when a federal court issued a compromise of sorts, which stated the Army would continue to use the lands surface, but no one would be allowed on the property without the Armys consent. Deferring to Docs belief that the gold would all be taken by the government should his find become too broadly known, the work force was confined to the immediate family and a couple of handfuls of trusted associates. A jury ruled that Mr. Ryan had acted in self-defense. Gold bars, silver, and jewels were reportedly buried by a spring under the big rocks of Cabello Canyon. As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. The gold, he said, was removed and smelted into old Mexican bars, 50-pound bars. The gold in its new form, he noted, had no marks to identify its origin. Noss claimed that he noticed a strange rock while taking shelter in a cave within Victorio Peak, in New Mexico in 1937. The family declines to discuss the incident. Because of this natural concentration, some placers are richer in gold than the original lode deposits. John Dean, the former lawyer for President Richard M. Nixon, mentioned that Attorney General John Mitchell had been asked to pull strings to allow some searchers to look for the gold. In the meantime, Mrs. Noss said her spies, illegally visited the peak and found military men excavating it. What looked to be a piece of iron was a solid gold bar. Within just a few days, Doc and Babe were back at the site with ropes and flashlights. The economic potential of placer deposits in New Mexico is unknown and most known economic placers in the state have been worked. Sometime around the year 1830, travelers were trying to find a new way to reach California from the newly opened route of Santa Fe. In 1963, the Army, consented to another search by a Denver mining company sponsored by the Museum of New Mexico. If nothing else, he said, an exhaustive search would lay to rest a question that has driven the family for more than 50 years. 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. Caballo Mountains - Also called Horse Mountains, the peaks are located 35 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. 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. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. 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. American and foreign car makers have rented land at the installation to test new air bags. Porter and his friends were amused at his story and McDonald, to prove that what he was saying was true, took the two other hunters on a moonlit drive to Victorio Peak. In 1937, the peak was miles from nowhere. [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]. 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. Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. Some believe that Doc Noss found the Casa del Cueva de Oro, Spanish for the House of the Golden Cave. Parts of White Sands are sometimes leased by private corporations and foreign governments for experiments. is also on Facebook, New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, Notice of Right to Inspect Public Records, Stephen Wells Bright Star Scholar Program, National Uranium Resource Evaluation database (NURE), Stacy Timmons interviewed for "Searchlight New Mexico" article, New paper published on the timing of small-volume eruptions and related volcanic hazards at Valles caldera. Four. Through the years, soldiers at White Sands have spent weekends looking for the gold. ): 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. The secret stash of a gold mine owner? If the treasure was real, Noss had poor timing. After the death of Doc Noss, Ova and her family continued efforts to regain access to the big treasure room. Doc Noss spent the next 10 years in intermittent efforts to regain access to the hoard, in vain. Speaking to a Noss family member, he stated that he had been the Chief of Security in 1961 and was sent to inspect the report made by Airman Berlett and Captain Fiege. He stood guard while McDonald and the other man descended into a large cavern, returning with a crudely formed gold bar roughly 2 1/2 inches wide by 7 inches long. Others speculate that the treasure could be the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmillian, who served as Mexicos emperor in the 1860s. A treaty was reached between the tribe and the Federal government in Washington that the Indians could stay upon the land in New Mexico. She appealed to state officials, who forced the search to stop. Hunting by himself, Doc scouted the base of the mountain. 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. Decades of Searching. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his Babe, disappearing into the desert, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed. During fluvial events, large volumes of sediment containing free gold are transported and deposited in relatively poorly-sorted alluvial and stream deposits. Parts of the treasure were described as gold, silver, jewels and as many as 16,000 gold bars estimated around $1.7 billion dollars. The gold, Porters friend stated breathlessly, ran in a tremendous stack along one side of the cavern stretching for approximately 200 yards. This time, the military began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak. Victorio knew how much the white man valued gold and had little use for it himself; he amassed vast amounts of treasure by attacking the white settlers. 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. Then in 1981, the construction crew found the gold bar, and today scientists have confirmed it was part of the Aztec treasures that Cortes hoped to steal away from Mexico for Spain. On the walls were drawings, some painted and others chiseled, that appeared to have been made by Indians. When he reached the surface, he told Babe, This is the last one of them babies Im gonna bring out. However, when Babe rolled the bar over, she noticed a yellow gleam where the gravel of the hillside had scratched off centuries of black grime. The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. There were 110 gold bars moved that night, according to an affidavit obtained by this writer and sworn to by Jolley. 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. Two local ranch workers stumbled upon the search and notified Mrs. Noss. In 1948, Doc met Charles Ryan, a Texan involved in drilling operations and oil exploration in West Texas. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Thayer Snipes of El Paso, Texas, swore to an affidavit regarding another death. In 1963, the Gaddis Mining Company of Denver, Colorado, obtained permission to work the site under a contract with the Denver Mint and the Museum of New Mexico. But in 1977, the Army agreed to allow some searchers with competing claims, including Mrs. Noss, to search the grounds. The two decided to keep the discovery between themselves and return to inspect the shaft later. A third, smaller stack, pyramidal in shape, stood about three feet high. Sam Scott, for example, a retired airline pilot, was warned in 1977 to keep clear of anything regarding Victorio Peak for at least five years under pain of having his home firebombed and his wife and daughter killed. The saga faded back into obscurity until the Watergate hearings, when John Dean, the dismissed White House counsel, testified before the Ervin Committee that F. Lee Bailey had approached John N. Mitchell, then Attorney General, for help in retrieving 292 bars containing 60 per cent gold and 40 per cent copper from the White Sands range. 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. Finally reaching the bottom, Doc stepped into a chamber the size of a small room. According to Berlett, the four men proceeded down a fault into the peak for about 150 feet, at which point their progress was stopped by a large boulder. Recreational mining continues intermittently in the White Oaks, Pittsburg, Hillsboro, Orogrande and Jicarilla districts to the present day. 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. A prospector made an extraordinary discovery yesterday, when he found an "incredibly rare" 12-pound (5.5-kilogram) gold nugget under only 23 inches of dirt. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. Exploring further, he found even more skeletons stacked in a small enclosure, much like a burial chamber. This writer conducted extensive interviews with Thomas Berlett. A Partner and a Gunfight. 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. [5] She later was part of an unsuccessful 1963 search. The daughter of another man, Harvey Snow, died from a gunshot wound in the head after Snow had disregarded repeated warnings in regard to the peak. And we were poor and I guess a little dumb. One partner, Charles Ryan, shot and killed Doc on March 5, 1949, in Hatch, N. M., after an argument. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. They believe that if the Lue Map and the hieroglyphs could be deciphered then the gold bars could be found. 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. Additionally, the actual land where Victorio Peak is located was not owned by the State of New Mexico but rather by a man named Roy Henderson, who had leased it to the Army. Reaching a compromise, the military allowed Expeditions Unlimited, representing all of the claimants, to excavate the peak in 1977. The Lue Map has very strange symbols. 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. Lucky Gold Miners hit it Big in Downieville. But even the nicest people we'd take in, they'd see gold and go berserk.. Although a suitable path fit for wagons couldn't be found, traces of gold were found somewhere close to Silver City to the north. The more productive ore zones typically occur as narrow pay streaks or layers of fine-grained, disseminated gold, locally on top of basement rock or clay or caliche lenses within gravel deposits. 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. The major took the bar and told Porter to check back with him in a few days. The men believed that Porters friend was in a good position to help arrange an official government expedition to claim the gold. For Trademark Information on Scientology Services. They bore the Spanish stamp. He worked with a succession of partners, the last of whom, Charlie Ryan of Alice, Texas, shot and killed Noss in an altercation in Hatch, New Mexico, on March 5, 1949. Anyone can read what you share. In one room he discovered a large stash of old swords and guns, papers and letters from the 19th century, and a kings ransom in jewels and coins. The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. Years later, in 1946, Doc discussed his exploration with Gordon E. Herkenhoff, field representative of the New Mexico State Land Office.1. McGuires Place Now there were two military commands involved. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Noss divorced her, charging desertion. Lyndon Johnsons name loomed large in the information that Freedom uncovered, with various sources claiming that the president was instrumental in the planning and execution of the removal of the gold. The rate of this tax varies from 5.125% to 8.8675% depending on where the business is . Anyone can read what you share. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Case He was also known to take prisoners back to the Basin, where he subjected them to elaborate torture tests before killing them. Mr. Bailey later dropped the matter. Mr. Bailey will not say, but Mrs. Noss and, her dozen or so partners have filed a $1billion Federal Court suit charging that the Government, the Secretary of the Army, several military officers and 200 John Does were conspiring to bilk her out of the treasure. The initial soundings appear to indicate a cavern precisely where Mr. Noss described. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. When the rain finally stopped, Doc returned to camp, telling Babe of the discovery. State officials, who was an Army major the nicest people we 'd take in, 'd... Nation 's largest military installation, about 13 or 14 years old, he to. 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