Acquitted on grounds of selfdefense, Mr. Ryan testified that Doc had promised him 51 bars of gold in return for his $27,000 investment. Later, the wealth in the cave would be calculated to be worth more than two billion dollars. American and foreign car makers have rented land at the installation to test new air bags. They even brought in their own security guards, he added. 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. A treaty was reached between the tribe and the Federal government in Washington that the Indians could stay upon the land in New Mexico. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. 7 Louisiana Ghost Towns Hidden Deep in the Bayou. They were searching in the wrong place, Mrs. Noss said. After more than a year's effort, he took five bars to the Denver Mint. 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 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. Things got complicated in 1937, when Milton E. Noss, a selfasserted chiropodist with a string of arrests for drunk enness, theft and practicing medicine without a license, said he had found the treasure. 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.. 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. The Legendary Treasure White Sands Missile Range, https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/13/archives/the-legendary-treasure-of-the-white-sands-missile-range-gold-bars.html. The major took the bar and told Porter to check back with him in a few days. Gold bullion bars are struck continuously to meet the demand for gold, with the following refineries and mints representing some of the greatest refiners of gold bars: Credit Suisse PAMP Suisse Republic Metals Corporation Sunshine Minting Valcambi Suisse Buying Gold Bullion from JM Bullion 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. There were thousands of them, covered with old, dusty buffalo hides. Mr. Bailey claimed that given a helicopter and a half-hour, he could find 292 gold bars. 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 . The cloud of death shrouding Victorio Peak has reached far. 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. The blast was a disaster, causing a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shafts, and effectively shutting Doc out of his mine. Through the years, soldiers at White Sands have spent weekends looking for the gold. The flamboyant lawyer F. Lee Bailey once said he represented 50 unnamed clients. Doc later brought one of the eerie things out.2. 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. Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. Ova Noss, Leonard Fiege and others dont listen when they are told to shut up and they pay the price. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved). November 16, 2015. 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. 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. Years later, in 1946, Doc discussed his exploration with Gordon E. Herkenhoff, field representative of the New Mexico State Land Office.1. Suddenly, a host of people surfaced to lay claims on the legendary gold treasure. But in a dispute over the treasure in 1949, the business partner, Charlie Ryan, shot Mr. Noss to death. Jan 20, 2020 Ian Harvey. During World War II, he divorced his wife, Ova, and disappeared for several years. The Lost Padre Gold Mine in New Mexico. Four. 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. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. ): 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. They believe that sophisticated equipment like devices to take soundings showing whether there are underground caves will help this search succeed where other ventures failed. Instead, it has a "gross receipts tax." This is a tax levied on the business rather than the consumer, like in most states. 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. 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. New Mexico does not have a sales tax. The world's first atomic bomb was detonated here on July 16, 1945. Most placer deposits in New Mexico had been discovered by 1900. hell, I'll get Eleanor.. 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. Many people believe the search points to the area of the four corners. However, according to a group of researchers who published their findingsfroma seismic study in the 1990s, there definitely is a sizable cavern underneath Victorio Peak, meaning there may be some truth to the treasure. 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 . The bars that Noss and his crew removed from Victorio Peak were, in general, crudely formed, indicating the use of primitive smelting processes. A third story asserts that Geronimo hid, Apache booty in the area. Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. In 1963, the Army allowed a group of searchers, including Mrs. Noss, to search for the gold. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. 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. Caballo Mountains - Also called Horse Mountains, the peaks are located 35 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. The mystery boils down to a single question: Was Milton (Doc) Noss telling the truth, or just a tall tale? Just 12 years after discovering the treasure, Doc Noss died with just $2.16 in his pocket. 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). Within moments he found more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the first. It is estimated that 662,000 oz of gold have been produced from placer deposits throughout New Mexico from 1828 to 1991. 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. The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. Each skeleton had its hands bound behind it to a large wooden stake driven into the ground. 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. If nothing else, he said, an exhaustive search would lay to rest a question that has driven the family for more than 50 years. In 1981, a construction worker discovered the gold bar, weighing 4.25 lbs. and Montana Ave. in El Paso, Texas, to visit with a friend, Frank Foss, owner of the station. This Nevada Gold Mine Produces Amazing Crystalline Gold Nuggets! 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. This could explain the skeletons in the cavern. All Rights Reserved. The higher gold values occur near the base of alluvial gravel deposits where the gold is trapped by natural processes such as riffles in the river bottom, fractures within the bedrock, along bedding or foliation planes, and/or structures that are transverse to the river flow. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. But the expedition soon went broke, and the Army declared that it would allow no more searches. Lampros, for example, described having his photograph taken with Colonel Willard E. Holt of Lordsburg, New Mexico; each held an end of a bar while it was being sawed in half. A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City has confirmed it was part of the plunder Spanish conquistadors abandoned as they beat a temporary. 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