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. 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. The fortune of a Mexican emperor? 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. Bill Shriver, before his death, told this writer that he had a copy of a transcribed order from Lyndon Johnson describing in detail how the president wanted a military escort to handle the supply of gold taken out of Victorio Peak and taken to his ranch. Mr. Fertig denied that the report had been censored. 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. An intense argument ensued, and Noss headed toward his car. Background research into the enormous wealth contained in the caverns of Victorio Peak revealed many eyewitness reports of the gold. 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. However, the business often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the selling price. In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. He supposedly told his wife: "We can make John D. Rockefeller look like a tramp. Another concerns renegades who robbed the Monterey Mint in 1743 and were in turn attacked by Apaches. As Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH . What looked to be a piece of iron was a solid gold bar. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Though the gold bar was. Hunting by himself, Doc scouted the base of the mountain. ", 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. 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. Fueled by suspicions that the military was working her claim, Babe Noss hired four men to enter the range secretly. All Rights Reserved. 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). Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. Decades of Searching. Shriver also said that he had copies of other presidential messages, several initialed by LBJ, dealing with the clandestine, illegal removal of the gold. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. However, Terry Delonas, her grandson, continued the family tradition and formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. There is evidence to indicate that many gold bars were removed from Victorio Peak a short time after Lynn Porter brought the bar to the Fort Bliss provost marshals office. Dozens of people claim a piece of the actionthat is, gold bars and treasure said to be hidden on the missile range, and worth from a few million dollars to $1.5billion. 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 before that happened, he must have hauled 500 or 600 bars of gold out of there and hid them, contended Mrs. Guthrie. Peak and look, accompanied by the missile range commander, Maj. Gen. John G. Shinkle, military pblicemen and Treasury agents. Maxmillian was assassinated in 1867. 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. Rare Gold Nuggets. 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. 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. Returning through the main cavern, he noticed an immense stack of metal bars off to one side. 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.. White Sands Missile Range, Legends, Ghosts, Myths and Mysteries Main Page, Byways & Historic Trails Great Drives in America, Soldiers and Officers in American History, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Texas Declaring Independence, Stanley, Ks Extinct but Still Here (LOK), Black Bob Reservation in Johnson County (LOK), Make History Come Alive With These Online Tools and Resources. 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. 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. 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. Ferdig, adding, The trouble with treasure stories is that there's always a little truth in them.. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. American and foreign car makers have rented land at the installation to test new air bags. Placer gold collected from multiple districts in New Mexico, coupled with a broad database of previously analyzed placer gold samples indicate correlations between chemical signatures (especially gold, silver, and copper) and type of deposits (i.e., Au-rich copper porphyry deposits, Au porphyry deposits, and epithermal deposits). Where they the plunder of Spanish conquistadores who had conquered the Aztecs? The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. Later, some researchers would conclude that the shaft was the same as the Lost Padre Mine used by Padre LaRue in the late 1700s, then later used again by Chief Victorio to store his stolen goods. 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. Dangerous unexploded 20mm shells from Phantom jet target practice dot the range, the Army insists. But in 1977, the Army agreed to allow some searchers with competing claims, including Mrs. Noss, to search the grounds. Babe then began a regular correspondence with the military requesting permission to work her claim, but she was always denied. But in a dispute over the treasure in 1949, the business partner, Charlie Ryan, shot Mr. Noss to death. In 1979, he sold a small mail-order business to devote full time to the search. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved). It could finally solve the mystery. The 1.93-kilogram bar was found by a construction worker during excavations for a new building along the Alameda, a picturesque park in the heart of the Mexican capital. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. 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. 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. Too much evidence supports the treasure, including photographs, affidavits, and relics held by the Noss family. Mrs. Noss and Mrs. Guthrie, meanwhile, say that they had heard about the 1963 search and rushed to the base, arriving the day before it ended. When Docs story eventually hit the headlines, scholars began speculating on how the enormous treasure could have come to be stashed inside 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. Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. [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. The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. 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. 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. 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. And for good reason. But while trying to blast his way to the gold in 1939, he accidentally closed the hole. A jury ruled that Mr. Ryan had acted in self-defense. 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. Seeking out the Seven Cities of Gold, Onate was said to have been a cruel man, brutally subjugating the Indians to do his bidding by beating and torturing them. He bolted from the Mescalero reservation in 1879 and camped near Victoria Peak while plundering the countryside and raiding Wells Fargo stagecoaches. Edward Atkins himself died, reportedly of a heart attack, in April 1979 while returning to Illinois from El Paso on a matter pertaining to his claim. Doc was trying to obey the law but they grabbed our gold, Mrs. Noss said, He blew up. According to the security guard, Johnson and Connally headed a team which brought in sophisticated excavation equipment to remove gold from the peak, the most modern Ive ever seen, he said. 2016, Trace Element Analysis of Placer Gold Samples (abstr. 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