Forrest Fenn, a New Mexico art collector, created a treasure hunt in 2010. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. [5] The partnership conducted unsuccessful searches until March 1996, when the Army suspended their access. She called her lawyer, Philip Koury, of Kansas City, who phoned General Shinkle. Maxmillian was assassinated in 1867. 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. 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. In 1937, the peak was miles from nowhere. When the rain finally stopped, Doc returned to camp, telling Babe of the discovery. 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. He was shot to death in 1949, but his first wife, Mrs. Ova Noss, now 77years old, insists she was with him. It is estimated that 662,000 oz of gold have been produced from placer deposits throughout New Mexico from 1828 to 1991. Ever since then, driven by a desire to become fabulously wealthy, Mr. Noss himself, his descendants, investors and soldiers at White Sands Missile Range, which includes Victorio Peak, have gone in time after time searching for treasure, but have always come up empty. In 1979, he sold a small mail-order business to devote full time to the search. Many years later, a man named Milton Ernest Doc Noss spent some time exploring Victorio Peak while on a deer hunt. 'Like Any Other Client'. 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. Estimates vary on the number of bars removed, ranging up to 350 or so. After 35 years of localized dispute, the Great White Sands Missile Range Lost Gold Treasure Affair has blossomed into a national mystery. They dug under it, and Berlett and Fiege moved past it for another 100 to 125 feet, coming eventually to what Berlett described as a small cavern, approximately eight feet wide by 10 or 12 feet long. 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. 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. As far as I'm concerned, I've got more gold in my upper bridge than is in those mountains., The center of interest is Victoria Peak, a 1,500foot hill in the San Andres Mountains on missile range land about 25 miles northeast of Las Cruces. (Reuters) 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.For 39 years, its origins remained a mystery.INAH - National Institute of Anthropology and History/Handout via REUTERS Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History Meanwhile, Tony Jolley, now a 69-year-old rancher living outside Boise, Ida., never forgot those bars of gold he helped bury in 1949. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. The soldiers, Airman First Class Thomas Berlett and Captain Leonard V. Fiege said they had found approximately 100 gold bars weighing between 40 and 80 pounds each in a small cavern. A new chemical analysis of a large gold bar found under a Mexico City street in 1981 has shed light on its centuries-old origins. Discovered by a . 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. What looked to be a piece of iron was a solid gold bar. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. That I had known E.M. Guthrie for about three years prior to this meeting and knew him to be the husband of Letha Guthrie, stepdaughter of Milton Ernest Doc Noss. In a hunt that began last Thursday, Mr. Delonas's group has been given one year to search for the gold. After much searching, he finally found a small iron bar to carry back through the narrow passageway. The caverns are located in and around Victorio Peak, in a remote, rugged section of south-central New Mexico. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. 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. Case and Montana Ave. in El Paso, Texas, to visit with a friend, Frank Foss, owner of the station. 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. He said I'll get F.D.R. Victorio Peak, located in northern Dona Ana County, now lies within the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. Going public with information about the gold stored in Victorio Peak or removed from it, however, is something that people familiar with the subject are generally reluctant to do. 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. This Nevada Gold Mine Produces Amazing Crystalline Gold Nuggets! 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. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. That three or four weeks later Frank Foss told me that E.M. had called him and said he was in Central America. He also told his wife that there were enough gold and silver coins to load 60 to 80 mules.. But Doc Noss cared little about the historical value of the treasures inside Victorio Peak, mostly ignoring the pouches, packs, and artifacts. He has recruited friends and investors to form the Ova Noss Family Partnership, named for his late grandmother, that is financing the new search. 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. Others speculate that the treasure could be the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmillian, who served as Mexicos emperor in the 1860s. 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. 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. One partner, Charles Ryan, shot and killed Doc on March 5, 1949, in Hatch, N. M., after an argument. See the article in its original context from. It all started in 1937, when Mr. Noss, who practiced as a foot doctor though it was never clear if he had a medical license, returned from a hunting trip at New Mexico's Victorio Peak with startling news: he had glimpsed a hidden trove of riches, 16,000 gold bars. However, Terry Delonas, her grandson, continued the family tradition and formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. hell, I'll get Eleanor.. Holes were drilled and it assayed at $20.67 an ounce, said Mrs. Noss. There were 110 gold bars moved that night, according to an affidavit obtained by this writer and sworn to by Jolley. 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. Several smaller rooms had been chiseled from the rock along one wall. In the room were two large stacks of gold bars, each roughly six feet high, three feet wide and eight feet long. Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved). For Trademark Information on Scientology Services. 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. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Though the gold bar was. The bars that Noss and his crew removed from Victorio Peak were, in general, crudely formed, indicating the use of primitive smelting processes. As a child, he said he remembered his grandmother, Ova Noss, talking about it ceaselessly. Suddenly, a host of people surfaced to lay claims on the legendary gold treasure. [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. Ferdig, adding, The trouble with treasure stories is that there's always a little truth in them.. Instead, it has a "gross receipts tax." This is a tax levied on the business rather than the consumer, like in most states. A small town was built near the place [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. Mr. Delonas said the legend of the buried treasure obsessed the family for generations. New Mexico does not have a sales tax. Parts of White Sands are sometimes leased by private corporations and foreign governments for experiments. 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. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. 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. Another source, who asked to remain unidentified, stated that he had personally interviewed several men who had brought a large load of the peaks gold to Johnsons ranch. 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). Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. 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. Mr. Mitchell is said to have forwarded the matter to the White House. See the article in its original context from. A narrow passage through rocks kept the bulky Porter from following the other two men into the depths of the peak. 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. Victorio knew how much the white man valued gold and had little use for it himself; he amassed vast amounts of treasure by attacking the white settlers. Doc Noss spent the next 10 years in intermittent efforts to regain access to the hoard, in vain. 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. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. He estimated there were thousands of these bars, each weighing over 40 pounds stacked against a wall. According to this source, a B-24 was used to transport at least seven loads of the peaks gold, with up to 20 tons of gold moving in each load. 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. (1.93 kilograms), while digging for the construction of a central bank in Mexico City. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. South Pass City - A Look into Wyoming's Past. 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. Among those who attested to the accessibility of the peaks treasure was Lynn Porter, a businessman now residing in San Diego, California. They insisted they were photographed, finger printed, harassed and not al lowed to go near the search area. 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. 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