Others speculate that the treasure could be the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmillian, who served as Mexicos emperor in the 1860s. In 1981, a worker in Mexico City found a gold bar just north of Alameda Centralthe oldest public park in the Americasduring the construction of a bank. now. Yet that is exactly what happened to Milton "Doc" Noss, a traveling doctor who discovered an extensive cave network laden with gold and historical artifacts or so he claimed. Lucky Gold Miners hit it Big in Downieville. A third, smaller stack, pyramidal in shape, stood about three feet high. Now, cleared to go by an act of Congress, the best-equipped search ever is under way with $1 million in backing from the descendants and some investors. That I knew E.M. Guthrie had taken an active personal interest in the fate of gold located in Victorio Peak by Doc Noss. Doc tried several times to regain entry into his mine, but the shaft was sealed with tons of debris. After three years they were given permission to go back to Victoria. Its occasional visitors included hunting parties, and Doc Noss and his wife, Ova, were on one such expedition in search of deer. Parts of the treasure were described as gold, silver, jewels and as many as 16,000 gold bars estimated around $1.7 billion dollars. 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. In the meantime, Mrs. Noss said her spies, illegally visited the peak and found military men excavating it. 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. 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. The Army then shut down all operations stating that no additional searches would be allowed. Denied entry by the courts until legalities could determine the legal owner of the mine; Doc feared Ryan would back out of the deal. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Berlett and Fiege formed a corporation to protect what they had found and make a formal application to enter White Sands for a search and retrieval of the gold. The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. 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. We took 90 bars stacked by a mine shaft at Victorio Peak and reburied them 10 in a pile scattered throughout the basin with the exception of 30 bars that we buried in a grassy flat near the road we came out on.. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. In a deeper cavern, Doc found what he thought was a stack of worthless iron bars. Another concerns renegades who robbed the Monterey Mint in 1743 and were in turn attacked by Apaches. Acquitted on grounds of selfdefense, Mr. Ryan testified that Doc had promised him 51 bars of gold in return for his $27,000 investment. 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. Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. 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. Through the years, soldiers at White Sands have spent weekends looking for the gold. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. 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. 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. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Gold also concentrates above cemented gravels and clay layers within gravel deposits, which constrain downward migration of gold particles. And a fourth story, pieced together recently by Howard Bryan, a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune, centers on another Apache war chief named Victorio. Mr. Bryan, The Albuquerque Tribune writer, said he had gone through a chunk of Mr. Johnson's memorabilia recently and found both the censored and uncensored drafts of the report. Ferdig, adding, The trouble with treasure stories is that there's always a little truth in them.. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. Searching with 15 people at a time to try to determine the size of the cave, the group in a few weeks plans to start drilling 6-inch holes several hundred feet deep into the areas where the soundings show the cave is. All Rights Reserved. The secret stash of a gold mine owner? We all dream of stumbling onto a map or riddle that will lead us on an adventure to find a treasure of glittering gold and jewels, but most of those tales only exist in bedtime stories and movies. Known placer gold deposits were found along the southern and eastern flanks of the Ortiz Mountains; however, there could be additional placer gold deposits along the western flanks of the mountain range. 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. After some airmen from a nearby air force base claimed they found some gold at Victorio Peak, the Army and Secret Service began a secret search in 1961. A four-pound gold bar found on a building site in downtown Mexico City last month is believed to be part of the treasure seized from the Aztec Emperor Montezuma II by the Spanish. Noss divorced her, charging desertion. Four major groups of claimants accuse the oothers of trying to cheat them out of it. 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. Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. Though caught trespassing and escorted from the area, the men reported observing several men in Army fatigues upon the peak. [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. Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. 2016, Trace Element Analysis of Placer Gold Samples (abstr. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. They found nothing. Setting up camp on the desert floor at the base of Victoria Peak, the men headed into the wilderness while their wives stayed at camp. Mr. Bailey, who represents 50 unidentified claimants, says that with a helicopter and a half an hour he can lead officials to 292 gold bars, for openers. In 1963, the Army allowed a group of searchers, including Mrs. Noss, to search for the gold. 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.. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. When Docs story eventually hit the headlines, scholars began speculating on how the enormous treasure could have come to be stashed inside Victorio Peak. Over the weekend, he said, someone found the chest he had buried with gold nuggets, coins, gems and artifacts. He also asserts that military security officers censored out of his report all references to military searches for the treasure. 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. The earliest reports of placer mining were in the 1600s along the northern Rio Grande. Mr. Koury asserted that the General first denied the search was on but admitted it later when sworn statements from the spies were produced. The peak is riddled with a network of tunnels. Reached for comment in Cocoa Beach, Florida, General Shinkle adamantly denied any knowledge of the gold and refused to comment at all on the story. Doc later brought one of the eerie things out.2. Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. Lifting the rock, he found a hole that led straight down into the mountain. She appealed to state officials, who forced the search to stop. 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. Case At one time, he brought out a crown, which contained 243 diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. Years later, in 1946, Doc discussed his exploration with Gordon E. Herkenhoff, field representative of the New Mexico State Land Office.1. The slightest movement stirred up a cloud. Six men who worked with Doc in removing the gold C.D. He was overcome with joy that they might be gold. Lack of water has hampered mining in many districts and new technology, which minimizes water usage, may stimulate activity. Meanwhile, Tony Jolley, now a 69-year-old rancher living outside Boise, Ida., never forgot those bars of gold he helped bury in 1949. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. Forrest . A small town was built near the place Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. The blast was a disaster, causing a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shafts, and effectively shutting Doc out of his mine. 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. History [ edit] Doc Noss 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. 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. Most placer deposits in New Mexico had been discovered by 1900. 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