some of the gold to Mexico, in light planes. Anyone can read what you share. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. Doc attempted illegally to sell his gold for nine years, but it wasnt easy finding buyers. Although the originals have never been recovered, a copy of one of the documents proved to be a translation from Pope Pius III. 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. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. Mr. Bailey later dropped the matter. 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. This time, the military began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak. 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. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. Among the artifacts, Doc is reported to have retrieved documents dated 1797, which he buried in the desert in a Wells Fargo chest along with various other treasures. In 1979, Babe died without ever finding the treasure. 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. They bore the Spanish stamp. [5] The partnership conducted unsuccessful searches until March 1996, when the Army suspended their access. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. Holes were drilled and it assayed at $20.67 an ounce, said Mrs. Noss. After the discovery, Fiege told several people that he had caved in the roof and walls to make it look like the tunnel ended. All four men Fiege, Thomas Berlett, Ken Prather and Milleadge Wessel were, at the time of their find, employees at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Another concerns renegades who robbed the Monterey Mint in 1743 and were in turn attacked by Apaches. For the next few years, Mr. Noss sought partners to help him find the gold. A priest named LaRue at Durango in northern Mexico was looking after the soldier who told the priest . Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. Montgomery, the two went into the mountain to blast out the shaft. 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. 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. Lost Treasures, Recent Posts. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. 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. 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 sources of this threat, according to the man who relayed the threat to Scott, were two agents of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. 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. Babe then began a regular correspondence with the military requesting permission to work her claim, but she was always denied. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. [5] During the 1970s, lawyer F. Lee Bailey represented clients who claimed to know where the treasure was located. Because of this natural concentration, some placers are richer in gold than the original lode deposits. 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. Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. In the spring of 1938, Doc Noss and Babe went to Santa Fe to establish legal ownership of the find, filing a lease with the State of New Mexico for the entire section of land surrounding Victorio Peak. Sometime around the year 1830, travelers were trying to find a new way to reach California from the newly opened route of Santa Fe. But the expedition soon went broke, and the Army declared that it would allow no more searches. They come in a variety of weights, fineness and designs. 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. Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. 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. 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. While Babe looked on from above, Doc inched his way down the narrow passageway into the mountain nearly 60 feet. 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. 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. The men believed that Porters friend was in a good position to help arrange an official government expedition to claim the gold. While waiting for the rain to subside, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked somehow. But before that happened, he must have hauled 500 or 600 bars of gold out of there and hid them, contended Mrs. Guthrie. In the meantime, Mrs. Noss said her spies, illegally visited the peak and found military men excavating it. Lack of water has hampered mining in many districts and new technology, which minimizes water usage, may stimulate activity. A jury ruled that Mr. Ryan had acted in self-defense. According to a close relative interviewed by Freedom, Shriver was murdered. The relative said that Shriver was beaten up in California, beaten about the kidneys and the head and subsequently died from his injuries. Reportedly the military was able to penetrate one of the caves and inventory the contents. At one end of the chamber, the shaft continued downward. In 1937, the peak was miles from nowhere. Noss divorced her, charging desertion. The next day, March 5, 1949, Ryan arrived in the area, insisting that they discuss the problem of what happened to the gold. Fearing Doc was getting a gun, Ryan fired a warning shot in Docs direction, demanding that Noss back away from the vehicle. 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. 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. However, with the discovery of gold, the treaty was broken in 1878, and Victorio went on the warpath. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved ). 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 gold, Porters friend stated breathlessly, ran in a tremendous stack along one side of the cavern stretching for approximately 200 yards. Begrudgingly, he did so. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Jan 20, 2020 Ian Harvey. 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. But the legend of the hidden gold was fueled again during the Watergate hearings in 1973. One story involves a Jesuit missionary named Padre LaRue whose band of 40 gold mining families was massacred in a punitive raid by Spanish soldiers in the early eighteenhundreds. 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. Ova Noss, Leonard Fiege and others dont listen when they are told to shut up and they pay the price. The Lost Padre Gold Mine in New Mexico. 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. Meanwhile, Noss's mining claims (for talc as a disguise) expired in 1948, and Mrs. Noss renewed them in her name. He also told his wife that there were enough gold and silver coins to load 60 to 80 mules.. The fortune of a Mexican emperor? The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. Los Angeles Times A Partner and a Gunfight. Later, Fiege would take a lie detector test, which would allow Fiege back on the missile range. 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. By James P. Sterba Special to The New York Times. 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.. 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. After the discovery, Fiege told several people that he had caved in the roof and walls to make it look like the tunnel ended. The economic potential of placer deposits in New Mexico is unknown and most known economic placers in the state have been worked. If nothing else, he said, an exhaustive search would lay to rest a question that has driven the family for more than 50 years. There were thousands of them, covered with old, dusty buffalo hides. The answer could be worth billions of dollars. The skeletons hands were bound behind its back apparently, the person had been deliberately left there to die. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. The cave was covering a small tunnel, originally thought to be an abandoned mineshaft. Letha told Freedom that she herself handled 12 to 15 of the bars, and I even put one up and hid it for four days.. The peak is riddled with a network of tunnels. Now there were two military commands involved. 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. 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 people believe the search points to the area of the four corners. 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. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved). 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. However, the business often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the selling price. The NMBGMR is conducting a research project examining the origin, occurrence, trace element composition, and resource potential of placer gold deposits in the state. Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology (INAH) says it has now confirmed that a 1.93-kilogram gold bar was part of looted Aztec treasure (AFP Photo/Jesus VALDOVINOS) A gold bar, found 15 feet down in a Mexico City park in 1981, was just announced to have been part of Montezuma's treasure. However, Noss demanded to see the money before revealing the new hiding place. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. The Army put those fellows in there blind knowing they wouldn't find anything.. In 1979, he sold a small mail-order business to devote full time to the search. 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. 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