Gold also concentrates above cemented gravels and clay layers within gravel deposits, which constrain downward migration of gold particles. 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. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved ). The men believed that Porters friend was in a good position to help arrange an official government expedition to claim the gold. Further, they stated that underground wealth, in whatever form it took, belonged to the state or any legal license holders. Bill Shriver, an international dealer in precious metals who proved very helpful in the initial stages of this investigation until his death, brought the total still higher. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. Two airmen from nearby Holloman Air Force Base would later say that they had found the gold cavern from another natural opening in the side of the peak. 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.. [3] Noss was ultimately killed by an associate, Charley Ryan, in 1949 after Ryan accused Noss of fraud and Noss threatened to kill Ryan and his family. Fueled by suspicions that the military was working her claim, Babe Noss hired four men to enter the range secretly. 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. The gold was supposedly removed from the cave and sent to Fort Knox. McLemore, V.T., 2001, Silver and gold resources in New Mexico: New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources, Resource Map 21, 60 p. Luterbach, T.D., and McLemore, V.T. Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico art collector, created a treasure hunt in 2010. Doc was trying to obey the law but they grabbed our gold, Mrs. Noss said, He blew up. The Mystery Of The Lost Victorio Peak Treasure, a group of researchers who published their findings. In addition, Victorio Peak lay on land owned by the state of New Mexico, and removal of gold without permission of the state violated New Mexico law.4. 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. 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. Ova convinced Doc to return to the big cave and bring one of the heavy bars back up. There were thousands of them, covered with old, dusty buffalo hides. Noss divorced her, charging desertion. 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. 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. Beyond the Hembrillo Basin is a hundred-mile stretch of desert known as the Jornada del Muerto. And we were poor and I guess a little dumb. But the matter would not rest. This Massive Mine in Utah Has Produced More Gold than Most States! This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. Holes were drilled and it assayed at $20.67 an ounce, said Mrs. Noss. [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 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. Denied entry by the courts until legalities could determine the legal owner of the mine; Doc feared Ryan would back out of the deal. Thayer Snipes of El Paso, Texas, swore to an affidavit regarding another death. Work beneath the city has not slowed, and as science advances . 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. 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. 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. 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 NMBGMR is conducting a research project examining the origin, occurrence, trace element composition, and resource potential of placer gold deposits in the state. 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. The earliest reports of placer mining were in the 1600s along the northern Rio Grande. 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. He said I'll get F.D.R. Docs object at the time of discovery, of course, was more than old bones. In the room were two large stacks of gold bars, each roughly six feet high, three feet wide and eight feet long. 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 When the rain finally stopped, Doc returned to camp, telling Babe of the discovery. 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. They believe that if the Lue Map and the hieroglyphs could be deciphered then the gold bars could be found. On each trip, Doc would retrieve two gold bars and as many artifacts as he could carry. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. The Lost Padre Gold Mine in New Mexico. Some were sold on the black market, some were stolen but others remained hidden during the next seven years when Doc and a bevy of partners attempted to dig back into the caverns, she asserted. Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. Mrs. Ova Noss said she shad filed papers retaining mineral rights in case the area opened up again. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his Babe, disappearing into the desert, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. 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. 2016, Trace Element Analysis of Placer Gold Samples (abstr. Mr. Koury asserted that the General first denied the search was on but admitted it later when sworn statements from the spies were produced. Anyone can read what you share. Los Angeles Times That about a month after that, I heard E.M. had been beaten to death in California. 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. Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. Possession of gold was against the law at the time, and the men reasoned that the bar would provide evidence to bring about an authorized, legal expedition to remove the vast quantity of gold. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. This was shortly before a much-publicized expedition, entitled Operation Goldfinder, took place at the site in March 1977. 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. During fluvial events, large volumes of sediment containing free gold are transported and deposited in relatively poorly-sorted alluvial and stream deposits. It would also explain the presence of the Wells Fargo bags, packsaddles, letters, and other artifacts dating to Victorios time. He also told his wife that there were enough gold and silver coins to load 60 to 80 mules.. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. 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. 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. 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. If the treasure was real, Noss had poor timing. 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. Mr. Bailey claimed that given a helicopter and a half-hour, he could find 292 gold bars. CNN Almost four decades ago, a gold bar was found on land that used to be Aztec ruins in Mexico. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. This theory explains the thousands of gold bars, antiquities, and artifacts dating more than 100 years later. The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. 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. This has led to charges that military officers have stolen, are stealing, or are preparing to steal the treasure for themselves. ", 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. In 1963, the Army, consented to another search by a Denver mining company sponsored by the Museum of New Mexico. One man, a Mr. After 35 years of localized dispute, the Great White Sands Missile Range Lost Gold Treasure Affair has blossomed into a national mystery. 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. They found nothing. November 16, 2015. In 1933, he married Ova Babe Beckworth, and the two settled down in Hot Springs, New Mexico, which later changed its name to Truth or Consequences. In 1979, he sold a small mail-order business to devote full time to the search. Noss refused to obey, and Ryan fired again, hitting Noss in the head, killing him instantly. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. Among those who attested to the accessibility of the peaks treasure was Lynn Porter, a businessman now residing in San Diego, California. 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. The treasure was allegedly found in 1937 by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. The economic potential of placer deposits in New Mexico is unknown and most known economic placers in the state have been worked. He carries in his wallet a photograph of gold bars and old coins next to a flashlight he provided. Native gold and electrum occurs with quartz, magnetite, ilmenite, amphiboles, pyroxenes, pyrite, zircon, garnet, rutile, and a variety of other heavy minerals. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. 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. [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]. Doc attempted illegally to sell his gold for nine years, but it wasnt easy finding buyers. He remained steadfast in his belief that the treasure remained, according to family members. 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. By completing a chemical analysis and determining the particle morphology of placer gold collected from these districts using an electron microprobe, patterns in the chemical signatures from each location can be used to examine chemical variability (1) within the individual placer gold particles, (2) within the same district and (3) among different districts. Mr. Fertig denied that the report had been censored. Published historic reserves exist for only two districts: Jicarilla with 5.4 million yd3 of 0.043 oz Au/yd3, or approximately 230,000 oz Au in place and Pittsburg with 2 million yd3 of 0.01 oz Au/yd3, or approximately 20,000 oz Au in place in 1936. Many streams in New Mexico contain at least traces of gold, enough to satisfy weekend gold panners. Moon, said that he was from the White House Secret Service detail and he showed the officer a green, laminated card which stated Secret Service, Division of the White House. Another man, an engineer named Dick Richardson, told the officer that he was a boyhood friend of Lyndon Johnsons and that he had personally counted 18,888 gold bars in one stack in a cavern at Victorio Peak, each bar weighing about 60 pounds. He used too much dynamite, and the cave collapsed, sealing in the treasure. The reported treasure and efforts to find it have been covered in books and on television, including: On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. Montgomery, the two went into the mountain to blast out the shaft. However, disputing the military claim, New Mexico officials stated that they leased only the lands surface to the military. I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. The skeletons hands were bound behind its back apparently, the person had been deliberately left there to die. Ova Noss, her two sons, Harold and Marvin, and her two daughters, Letha and Dorothy, helped Doc in the strenuous task of removing the bars, one at a time, from the depths of the peak. Asked about the bars, he said, I sawed one in two with a hacksaw., One person who worked with Doc Noss inside the cave was Jose Serafin Sedillo of Cuchillo, New Mexico. 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. He has recruited friends and investors to form the Ova Noss Family Partnership, named for his late grandmother, that is financing the new search. While waiting for the rain to subside, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked somehow. 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. However, it was a slow process, and in 1955, the White Sands Missile Range unexpectedly expanded their operations to encompass the Hembrillo Basin. 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.. 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. All Rights Reserved. At one time, he brought out a crown, which contained 243 diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. 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.. New Mexico does not have a sales tax. It is one of the most celebrated legends of buried treasure in the history of the American West, a thriller that includes a gunfight, nuclear weapons and the Watergate hearings. 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. (1.93 kilograms), while digging for the construction of a central bank in Mexico City. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. The flamboyant lawyer F. Lee Bailey once said he represented 50 unnamed clients. 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. Two local ranch workers stumbled upon the search and notified Mrs. Noss. They even brought in their own security guards, he added. 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. All attempts failed, leaving him an embittered and angry man, which caused problems in his marriage. 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. In 1981, a construction worker discovered the gold bar, weighing 4.25 lbs. 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 the death of Doc Noss, Ova and her family continued efforts to regain access to the big treasure room. 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 . Four major groups of claimants accuse the oothers of trying to cheat them out of it. The secret stash of a gold mine owner? But the expedition soon went broke, and the Army declared that it would allow no more searches. For Trademark Information on Scientology Services. Discovered by a . Shriver estimated the total amount of gold removed from Victorio Peak at 25 million troy ounces, of which 10 million came out in 1976. 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. Testing the old wooden pole attached to one side of the passage, Doc rejected the idea of using it and dropped into the shaft with a rope instead. To further complicate things, rumors swirled about various factions smuggling. He was shot to death in 1949, but his first wife, Mrs. Ova Noss, now 77years old, insists she was with him. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. The Army, which controls the missile range, insists there is no treasure and has never been any. 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. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. In one of the most closely guarded crimes of recent history, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tons of gold bullion were secretly and illegally removed from caverns on White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, the beneficiaries allegedly including former President Lyndon Johnson and individuals connected with the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime. 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. Now, researchers say the bar was. Meanwhile, Noss's mining claims (for talc as a disguise) expired in 1948, and Mrs. Noss renewed them in her name. 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. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. The major took the bar and told Porter to check back with him in a few days. The deposits generally occur in Late Tertiary- to Holocene-age alluvial fan deposits, bench or terrace gravel deposits, river-bars, and stream deposits or as residual placers formed directly on top of lode deposits typically derived from Proterozoic, Cretaceous, and Tertiary source rocks. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times. After discovering the treasure, Doc and Babe spent every free moment exploring the tunnels inside the mountain, living in a tent at the base of the peak. 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. Representative Harold Runnels, a Democrat whose district includes the White Sands range, has proposed a joint Federalstate search for the treasure. 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. 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. When Maxmillian heard of the plot to assassinate him, he moved his gold and treasures out of Mexico. At one end of the chamber, the shaft continued downward. 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. 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