Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. Too much evidence supports the treasure, including photographs, affidavits, and relics held by the Noss family. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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.. 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. Its occasional visitors included hunting parties, and Doc Noss and his wife, Ova, were on one such expedition in search of deer. But Doc Noss cared little about the historical value of the treasures inside Victorio Peak, mostly ignoring the pouches, packs, and artifacts. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. A legal battle and highly publicized search through Victorio Peak ensued but no treasure turned up, leading many to wonder if Noss had made the whole thing up. History [ edit] Doc Noss The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. 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. Led by U.S. Air Force Captain Leonard V. Fiege, the four had done extensive research on Victorio Peak, poring over old documents and records, and even traveling south into Mexico to check stories there regarding a man who has often been linked with the origin of the gold, Padre Philip La Rue. They also were given and passed lie detector tests. Treasure Net Forum At one time, he brought out a crown, which contained 243 diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. 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. This was one of Apache Chief Victorios hideouts and was the site of a battle in 1880 between Victorios warriors and the U.S. Army Ninth Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers.. They were searching in the wrong place, Mrs. Noss said. The total price for such a happy. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Decades of Searching. But even the nicest people we'd take in, they'd see gold and go berserk.. In effect, no one could mine the treasure, and that included the Army and Babe Noss. 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.. Two years later, he married Violet Lena Boles, which would further complicate ownership of the treasure rights for years to come. Mr. Bailey claimed that given a helicopter and a half-hour, he could find 292 gold bars. A source interviewed in Mexico stated that it was common knowledge in the towns of Jimenez and Camargo that Johnsons 110,000-acre ranch in Chihuahua served as a storage area for a very large amount of gold flown in by a four-engine, propeller-driven aircraft in the late 1960s. The men believed that Porters friend was in a good position to help arrange an official government expedition to claim the gold. 2003-2008 Church of Scientology International. Noss traveled down, passing caverns with Native American designs until he reached a room with hoards of gold, jewels, pouches, documents and 27 skeletons. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Docs object at the time of discovery, of course, was more than old bones. The Army, which controls the missile range, insists there is no treasure and has never been any. 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. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. Chester R. Johnson Jr., a museum archeologist at the time who wrote the official report of the treasure's history, says the 1963 search was inconclusive because, for example, seismic geophones do not work well near the surface. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. 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 next day, March 5, 1949, Ryan arrived in the area, insisting that they discuss the problem of what happened to the gold. Doc Noss spent the next 10 years in intermittent efforts to regain access to the hoard, in vain. CNN Almost four decades ago, a gold bar was found on land that used to be Aztec ruins in Mexico. He estimated there were thousands of these bars, each weighing over 40 pounds stacked against a wall. Meanwhile, Noss's mining claims (for talc as a disguise) expired in 1948, and Mrs. Noss renewed them in her name. 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. White Sands, New Mexico by the National Park Service. WHITE SANDS, N.M. Lost treasure stories are a dime a dozen in the Southwest. The gold was supposedly removed from the cave and sent to Fort Knox. 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. It is estimated that 662,000 oz of gold have been produced from placer deposits throughout New Mexico from 1828 to 1991. 7 Louisiana Ghost Towns Hidden Deep in the Bayou. As Doc continued to explore the side caverns, he found a hoard of treasure, including coins, jewels, saddles, and priceless artifacts, including a gold statue of the Virgin Mary. An intense argument ensued, and Noss headed toward his car. In 1972, F. Lee Bailey became involved in the dispute, representing some 50 clients, including Babe Noss, the Fiege group, Violet Noss Yancy, Expeditions Unlimited (a Florida-based treasure hunting group), and many others. 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. Kathy Weiser-Alexander/Legends of America, updated November 2021. 2016, Trace Element Analysis of Placer Gold Samples (abstr. 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. 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. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. Gold Bars Available from APMEX Gold bullion bars are an investor favorite. Mrs. Noss believes Mr. Bailey's clients to be mili tary officers and perhaps some of her husband's old partners. Fearing a Federal swindle at the time, Noss returned to Victoria Peak, carrying out gold bars and hiding them, Mrs. Guthrie said. 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. However, Terry Delonas, her grandson, continued the family tradition and formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. 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. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. 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 Army put those fellows in there blind knowing they wouldn't find anything.. White Sands is the nation's largest military installation, about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. 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. According to accounts from members of the Noss family, Doc bagged no deer, but he found something that whetted his appetite for the area a shaft near the top of Victorio Peak which led into the bowels of the mountain. 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. See the article in its original context from. Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. They insisted they were photographed, finger printed, harassed and not al lowed to go near the search area. [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. Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. Although the originals have never been recovered, a copy of one of the documents proved to be a translation from Pope Pius III. Another woman, now Mrs. Violet Yancy of Fort Worth, says she married Noss in 1947, that she is his legal widow, and that he gave her 76 per cent interest in the treasure. As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. The gold concentrates by gravity in incised stream valleys and alluvial fans in deeply weathered highlands. Seventy-nine skeletons were described in an adjacent cavern. 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. 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. [1][a] While there have been multiple documented expeditions to the peak, no gold has been officially recorded as being recovered from the site. The cloud of death shrouding Victorio Peak has reached far. The secret stash of a gold mine owner? To further complicate things, rumors swirled about various factions smuggling. By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times. 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. 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. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. 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 . Doc tried several times to regain entry into his mine, but the shaft was sealed with tons of debris. 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. The initial soundings appear to indicate a cavern precisely where Mr. Noss described. 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