In a little-known mountain range in southern New Mexico is. To this end, he brought in a mining engineer to use dynamite to enlarge the tunnel, but this would backfire tremendously. Subscribe Today! Docs object at the time of discovery, of course, was more than old bones. This time, the military began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak. Doc thought that he had discovered an old abandoned mineshaft. 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. Mine is set at 10 minutes delay, sensitivity level 7. In one chamber the wavering light of his beam danced over a row of skeletons down there in the gloom, all of them having had their hands bound behind their backs and tied to immense wooden stakes driven into the ground, the dead, empty sockets of their skulls looking lifelessly out onto their subterranean domain. 2003-2008 Church of Scientology International. Buy The Victorio Peak Mystery: A Search for the Greatest Lost Treasure Cache in America by Jameson, W.C. online on Amazon.ae at best prices. 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. Today, the Armys official position on the whereabouts of the gold remains cautious, maintaining that the burden of proof rests with the accusers. 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. 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. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. The reports of the massive treasure would consume his marriage and eventually his life, and mysteries around the treasure persist to this day (via Legends of America). While there have been multiple documented expeditions to the peak, no gold has been officially recorded as being recovered from the site. They even brought in their own security guards, he added. The skeletons hands were bound behind its back apparently, the person had been deliberately left there to die. 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. Yet this was only the beginning of the secrets of this mysterious labyrinth. At the same time that people were talking about where the treasure came from, they were talking about where it went. After the death of Doc Noss, Ova and her family continued efforts to regain access to the big treasure room. This writer conducted extensive interviews with Thomas Berlett. The U.S. Army, which gained control of the area when it was converted to a bombing range during the Second World War, refused her request to bring in an excavation firm and ultimately ordered the Nosses to stay out of the area. A deal with a man named Charlie Ryan went south, and Noss was gunned down. gunslinger44 May 17, 2020 Replies 11 Views 5K Oct 19, 2022 Juiced8 J The Lost Gold of Padre Larue and Victorio Peak and a Treasure Hunters Papers Daryl Friesen Sep 3, 2019 Replies 5 Views 4K Oct 18, 2022 autofull A Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. 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. Throughout history, some of the greatest rulers, adventurers, and artists have met mysterious ends. However, long before Victorio Peak was encompassed by the government, a man by the name of Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss spent some time exploring Victorio Peak while on a deer hunt. [1], Many years following the Doc Noss discovery, local newspapers reported different accounts of possible treasure finds and hikers falling in the Hembrillo Basin. Since time unremembered there has been a certain allure to the idea of lost treasure. Chester Stout, for example, a retired Army sergeant, traced the removal of two large truckloads of gold from Victorio Peak, but later had to move out of New Mexico; his life was threatened because, as he was told, he knew too much.. Join MU Plus+ and get exclusive shows and extensions & much more! When the rain finally stopped, Doc returned to camp, telling Babe of the discovery. Did they even exist at all? 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.. The gold was supposedly removed from the cave and sent to Fort Knox. In the years after this, Nosss ex-wife, Babe, continued to try to assert her own claim on the land and try to reopen the collapsed tunnel, without success. Once again, Doc began to descend about 125 feet before the shaft again leveled off into a large natural cavern. To think that there is a vast hoard of loot or priceless artifacts just lying around out in the wilds has driven people to the point of madness and obsession, and there seems to always be room for a good treasure story. However, disputing the military claim, New Mexico officials stated that they leased only the lands surface to the military. Case File: Victorio Peak Treasure Location: White Sands, New Mexico Date: November 1937 Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. He did, only to find that in the short, three-day interim the major had been whisked away, transferred to the Pentagon. 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. 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. The cloud of death shrouding Victorio Peak has reached far. Thayer Snipes of El Paso, Texas, swore to an affidavit regarding another death. They were eventually shut down from further excavations, but in 1963 the Gaddis Mining Company of Denver, Colorado, was given legal rights to work the site. In a four-page confidential report entitled Field Examination of Noss Mining Claims, Hembrillo District, Herkenhoff recorded a description: Dr. In the fall of 1939, Noss was starting to think that the rate of pulling up the heavy bars was not as fast as he would have liked, and so he came up with the idea of widening the main passage. Find high-quality stock photos that you won't find anywhere else. 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 attempted illegally to sell his gold for nine years, but it wasnt easy finding buyers. 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. 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. Ova convinced Doc to return to the big cave and bring one of the heavy bars back up. No one in the provost marshals office to whom Porter talked would admit to knowing anything about the gold, and he was warned by the provost marshal that any future trespassing would be dealt with severely. The three men had been on a hunting party when McDonald, who reportedly had imbibed several cans of beer, began talking freely about a huge stash of gold. While waiting for the rain to subside, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked somehow. By this time, Babes story had spread across the nation, profiled in several magazines and newspapers. In 1977, professional treasure hunter Norman Scott was able to determine through ground penetrating radar that there were indeed large chambers down beneath the peak exactly where Noss had said they would be, but that was as far as he got, and he was unable to find any of the actual gold. 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. Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. Fearing Doc was getting a gun, Ryan fired a warning shot in Docs direction, demanding that Noss back away from the vehicle. His strategy was to block the Army's access to the only potable water source and, therefore, cause them to retreat. Later, the wealth in the cave would be calculated to be worth more than two billion dollars. The peak is riddled with a network of tunnels. Past this was a dank room with what seemed to be just worthless bars of iron stacked against a wall, and by this time he was eager to get back to the surface and tell his wife what he had found. 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. In 1979, Babe died without ever finding the treasure. In yet another chamber, Noss was surprised to find a treasure trove of coins, jewels, gemstones, and even a shimmering gold statue of the Virgin Mary. As he looked around the area he climbed up the peak and found near the top a rock that didnt seem to fit, and which looked as if it had been worked or tooled with human hands. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. Past this chamber was an inclined tunnel that he followed down deeper into the bowels of the peak, soon coming across a rather macabre site buried down there. Edward Atkins of Decatur, Illinois, had been a claimant to the peak's gold and was vigorously pursuing that claim via attorney Darrell Holmes of Athens, Georgia, when Holmes died under mysterious circumstances. Though the military confirmed that Swanner had served at White Sands during this time, they claimed there were no documents to support an investigation into the mine nor the removal of the gold bars. He would forge a business partnership with a Texas oil man named Charlie Ryan, and in the meantime his growing paranoia in the face of increased media coverage of his discovery had him decide to move a good portion of his hidden stash. Many years later, a man named Milton Ernest Doc Noss spent some time exploring Victorio Peak while on a deer hunt. When they left that day, they did so with dreams of hitting it rich dancing through their heads. The Treasure of Victorio Peak By Bonnie Wayne McGuire New Mexico is a complex mural with mountains and desert that dominant the landscape. 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. Berlett and Fiege had found a different passage into Victorio Peak, leading into a different chamber. (Repeat) One man, a Mr. An intense argument ensued, and Noss headed toward his car. 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. In the room were two large stacks of gold bars, each roughly six feet high, three feet wide and eight feet long. The Tomar Hoard is a hoard of weapons, helmets and chalices believed to have been owned by the Knights Templar . Even though the military refused any of Babes efforts to work her claim, it did not refuse other military personnel from exploring portions of Victorio Peak. In 1948, Doc met Charles Ryan, a Texan involved in drilling operations and oil exploration in West Texas. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, Noss had only a few hundred that he had hidden in the desert. I keep reaching out to Tactacam but all I get back are the standard, canned, BS answers implying that I am doing something wrong with camera positioning. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading The Victorio Peak Mystery: A Search for the Greatest Lost Treasure Cache in America. Or at the very least, their remains have. Another source confirmed the manner and the circumstances of E.M. Guthries death, noting that it was listed as just a natural death, but hed been worked over with a baseball bat. This source said that he had hired a team of experienced investigators to dig into Guthries death and more than 30 other deaths in connection with a massive, continuing cover-up of the removal of gold from Victorio Peak. The first of these were airmen from the nearby employees at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, who went out to poke around the peak and see what they could find. He says it was a nice break from explaining Trinity Site or why there are roadblocks during missile tests. These are things we will perhaps never know, and the Victorio Peak treasure has remained shrouded in mysteries and unanswered questions to this day. FBI paperwork even indicates that an attorney in Washington went to the Bureau to report that Victorio Peak had been breached again and dynamite had been used on the Peak. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. When Docs story eventually hit the headlines, scholars began speculating on how the enormous treasure could have come to be stashed inside Victorio Peak. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. For Trademark Information on Scientology Services. Doc mentioned nothing of his find to the group, choosing instead to return to the site a couple of days later with Ova. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. Ryan was charged with murder but was later acquitted. 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. 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. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. Victorio Peak, located in northern Dona Ana County, now lies within the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. Theories spread over how 16,000 gold bars came to be stashed away in a random cave in New Mexico. His warriors raided southern New Mexico and Texasin an all-out war against the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers. The Victorio Peak story begins in November 1937 when Milton E. Noss went hunting in the Hembrillo Basin of the San Andres Mountains. Back in 1937, the place called Victorio Peak, named after a 19th century Apache war chief, was just a craggy rocky outcropping jutting up out of the parched, desolate wilds of southern New Mexico, in the United States, right next to the sprawling desert called the Jornada del Muerto and within what is in present day the White Sands Missile Range. Theories abound on the origins of the alleged treasure, from eighteenth-century Spanish missionaries to wealth pilfered from Mexico during the reign of the Austrian puppet Emperor Maximilian. However, Noss demanded to see the money before revealing the new hiding place. Others speculate that the treasure could be the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmillian, who served as Mexicos emperor in the 1860s. Later, Fiege would take a lie detector test, which would allow Fiege back on the missile range. They also were given and passed lie detector tests. Immediately reporting the activity to Babe Noss, Babe contacted Oscar Jordan with the New Mexico State Land Office, who, in turn, contacted the Judge Advocates Office at White Sands. ).While some of these lost treasures may be products of rumor . Estimates vary on the number of bars removed, ranging up to 350 or so. 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. Noss agreed with Ryan to exchange some of the gold bars for $25,000 to reopen the shaft. 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. Known as the Tomar Hoard, the collection is thought to have been amassed by the Catholic military order, famed for their exploits in The Crusades, between the 12th and 14th centuries. The Victorio Peak Mystery: A Search for the Greatest Lost Treasure Cache in America Hardcover - September 24, 2019 by W.C. Jameson (Author) 17 ratings Kindle $19.49 Read with Our Free App Hardcover $26.95 3 Used from $22.09 11 New from $20.88 In a little-known mountain range in southern New Mexico is an unremarkable mountain called Victorio Peak. However, it was a slow process, and in 1955, the White Sands Missile Range unexpectedly expanded their operations to encompass the Hembrillo Basin. 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. 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. In the summer of 1961, upon the advice of the Director of the Mint, Major General John Shinkle of White Sands allowed Captain Fiege, Captain Orby Swanner, Major Kelly, and Colonel Gorman to work the claim. The gambit worked well, until Army reinforcements arrived. The two decided to keep the discovery between themselves and return to inspect the shaft later. It was never seen again. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. Original release date January 29, 2018 This week on Expanded Perspectives the guys start the show off talking about how the story of human migration is under. 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. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Stepping into the eerie darkness, Doc was alarmed when he saw a human skeleton, kneeling and securely tied to a stake, driven into the ground. Nearly choking, the two men hastily marked their claim and made their exit. Doc Noss spent the next 10 years in intermittent efforts to regain access to the hoard, in vain. Although the originals have never been recovered, a copy of one of the documents proved to be a translation from Pope Pius III. Doc later brought one of the eerie things out.2. On August 5, Fiege and his party returned to Victorio Peak, accompanied by the commander of the Missile Range, a secret service agent, and 14 military police. All told, he reportedly found 27 human skeletons in the caverns of the mountain. Now there were two military commands involved. On the night of September 1, 1968, Porter drove to the peak with a friend and a civilian security guard from White Sands Missile Range named Clarence McDonald. Pine Ridge Indian ReservationWaz Ahha OykeOglala8,800201018,834[2] Victorio Peak, located in northern Dona Ana County, now lies within the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. The bar was given to an Army major at Fort Bliss who was a friend of Porters for safekeeping, but this major was soon reassigned without warning to move off with his family and the bar of gold. Free shipping for many products! 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. In November 1937, Doc, Babe, and four others left on a deer hunt into the Hembrillo Basin. He's written articles for MU and Daily Grail and has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and Binnal of America. 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. Parts of the treasure were described as gold, silver, jewels and as many as 16,000 gold bars estimated around $1.7 billion dollars. Gnero: Misterio Drama Misterios sin Resolver: Episodios Originales de Robert Stack - Temporada 2 Episodio 41 Episodio 41 Visin general: A third-anniversary show recalls fugitives apprehended with viewers' help. Hunting by himself, Doc scouted the base of the mountain. Theories abound on the origins of the alleged treasure, from eighteenth-century . At one time, he brought out a crown, which contained 243 diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. Some of these have claimed to have been part of the government cover-up of the treasure, including an engineer by the name of Dick Richardson, who claimed that he had personally counted 18,888 of the bars in service of the military, but the military has always denied all such claims, and has sought to squash what they call baseless rumors and discourage treasure hunters from entering the area. Montgomery, the two went into the mountain to blast out the shaft. According to Berlett, the four men proceeded down a fault into the peak for about 150 feet, at which point their progress was stopped by a large boulder. Most of them were so well-hidden that they were never exposed and adjudicated. Did the military remove it? 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. At the time it was in the middle of nowhere, and just about the only people who ever saw it were sporadic hunting parties that would come through the region from time to time. General Shinkle finally had enough and ordered everyone out. Where they the plunder of Spanish conquistadores who had conquered the Aztecs? That three or four weeks later Frank Foss told me that E.M. had called him and said he was in Central America. For more than 200 years, treasure hunters have been lured to Oak Island, a lush, 140-acre piece of land off the coast of Nova Scotia, where a hole dubbed the "Money Pit" promises a bounty of hidden wealthif they can reach it.This tireless stream of explorers.A single old coin. The Army then shut down all operations stating that no additional searches would be allowed. Just 12 years after discovering the treasure, Doc Noss died with just $2.16 in his pocket. Others have come forward to also claim the government removed all of the treasure as well, including security guards and officers at the base. 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.. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. That I knew E.M. Guthrie had taken an active personal interest in the fate of gold located in Victorio Peak by Doc Noss. While the caverns of Victorio Peak, according to Noss and other accounts, show signs of human working, it was certainly not the origin of the gold ingots, though the nature of the ingots suggests (though none exist to test) a crude and impure quality consistent with early Spanish mining practices. For three months beginning on June 20, 1963, the group used various techniques to search the area; however, they failed to turn up anything. Too much evidence supports the treasure, including photographs, affidavits, and relics held by the Noss family. Noss traveled down, passing caverns with Native American designs until he reached a room with hoards of gold, jewels, pouches, documents and 27 skeletons. 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. From November 21 to November 25 of that year, some claim that 36.5 tons of gold was taken from Victorio Peak, repoured to be sold overseas, via the C.I.A. In one room he discovered a large stash of old swords and guns, papers and letters from the 19th century, and a kings ransom in jewels and coins. Biology, nature, and cryptozoology still remain Brent Swancers first intellectual loves. This was the beginning of protracted legal battles over the ownership of the claim. Sources that have spoken anonymously over the years have indicated that Nixon's gold haul was around 25 million troy ounces in all. Some believe that Doc Noss found the Casa del Cueva de Oro, Spanish for the House of the Golden Cave. Eckles has been on and inside Victorio Peak and dealt with many of the treasure claimants. 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. Babe then began a regular correspondence with the military requesting permission to work her claim, but she was always denied. 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. Shriver also said that he had copies of other presidential messages, several initialed by LBJ, dealing with the clandestine, illegal removal of the gold. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. 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. Hiring a mining engineer S.E. In 1989, after years of legal wrangling and continuous efforts to have the site reopened, the Noss family was finally allowed to search for the treasure, but they have never been able to find it. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. 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. Treasure Hunting Treasure Legends Victorio Peak Top threads 1 2 3 Next Filters G Why did Charlie Ryan get away with murdering Doc Noss? 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. caverns under Victorio Peak, a bioherm reef structure located approximately 80 miles northeast of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Peering into the darkness, Doc saw an old man-made shaft with a thick, wooden pole attached at one side. In December 1961, General Shinkle shut down the operation and excluded anyone from entering the base who was not directly engaged in the missile research activities. 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. Becoming desperate for cash, Doc and a man named Joseph Andregg transported gold bars, coins, jewels, and artifacts into Arizona, selling them on the black market. Once, archaeologists believed that Homo sapiens journeye He estimated the total amount of gold coming from the peak at a staggering 96 million troy ounces, worth, at $320 an ounce, nearly $31 billion. The slightest movement stirred up a cloud. A third, smaller stack, pyramidal in shape, stood about three feet high. Years later, in 1946, Doc discussed his exploration with Gordon E. Herkenhoff, field representative of the New Mexico State Land Office.1. Returning through the main cavern, he noticed an immense stack of metal bars off to one side. Indeed, there supposedly were countless gold bars hidden away like this by the greedy Noss, who never would reveal their location. Nina Strochlic. Beyond the Hembrillo Basin is a hundred-mile stretch of desert known as the Jornada del Muerto. However, Terry Delonas, her grandson, continued the family tradition and formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. After much searching, he finally found a small iron bar to carry back through the narrow passageway. The seabed (also known as the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor, and ocean bottom) is the bottom of the ocean.All floors of the ocean are known as 'seabeds'. The Treasure of Victorio Peak is (or was) a supposed cache of gold bullion that was said to have been stored within a cavern in Victorio Peak, a basalt outcropping in the Hembrillo Basin, part of the San Andres Mountains of Doa Ana County, New Mexico, now part of the White Sands Missile Range. 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. 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. But Doc Noss cared little about the historical value of the treasures inside Victorio Peak, mostly ignoring the pouches, packs, and artifacts. This theory explains the thousands of gold bars, antiquities, and artifacts dating more than 100 years later. There were 110 gold bars moved that night, according to an affidavit obtained by this writer and sworn to by Jolley. Brent Swancer is an author and crypto expert living in Japan. February 27, 2014, 2:45 AM. The blast was a disaster, causing a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shafts, and effectively shutting Doc out of his mine. White Sands, New Mexico by the National Park Service. The bars that Noss and his crew removed from Victorio Peak were, in general, crudely formed, indicating the use of primitive smelting processes. He would dig at this anomalous stone to find that it was loose, and that it was situated over a shaft that led down into the gloom, along with a wooden pole fastened to its side. 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. They discovered only that Victorio Peak contained no goldbearing ore. Only yesterday, White Sands officials, after consulting with Army Department lawyers in Washington, decided to allow Mr.. Not long after this, the Army began a covert mining operation in the area, despite the fact that the New Mexico government had denied their requests to do so. On the walls were drawings, some painted and others chiseled, that appeared to have been made by Indians. A source interviewed in Mexico stated that it was common knowledge in the towns of Jimenez and Camargo that Johnsons 110,000-acre ranch in Chihuahua served as a storage area for a very large amount of gold flown in by a four-engine, propeller-driven aircraft in the late 1960s. White Sands Missile Range, Legends, Ghosts, Myths and Mysteries Main Page, Byways & Historic Trails Great Drives in America, Soldiers and Officers in American History, George Bent Cheyenne-American Soldier & Leader, Susan Magoffin Recording the Santa Fe Trail. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. The cloud of death shrouding Victorio Peak has reached far. The Victorio Peak Mystery: A Search for the Greatest Lost Treasure Cache in America : Jameson, W.C.: Amazon.sg: Books Looking about the barren landscape around them and paranoid of anyone else seeing what they were up to, they carefully replaced the boulder over the shaft and were determined to come back with what they would need to remove all of that loot. These are things we will perhaps never know, and the Victorio Peak treasure has remained shrouded in mysteries and unanswered questions to . Captain Leonard V. Fiege and Airman First Class Thomas Berlett took a group of others to Victorio Peak under the pretense of a hunting trip, duringwhich time they stumbled across a natural passage that led within the peak and ended up at a chamber filled with stacks of the gold bars. Seventy-nine skeletons were . Victorio Peak: Part Two - Jason Roberts Victorio Peak: Part Two By Jason Roberts | November 20th, 2019 | Tales of Blood and Gold Click here for Part One Scattered among the human remains, Doc found a fabulous, if not curious, collection of treasure. The Victorio Peak treasure (also seen in print as Treasure of Victorio Peak, Treasure of San Andres) describes a cache of gold found inside Victorio Peak in 1937 in southern New Mexico by American businessman and gold prospector Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss (born in Taloga, Oklahoma on July 3, 1905. 2019 coachmen freedom express 29se; how to calculate the force of gravity on an object; 1994 mercedes s500 w140 for sale; inside of knee painful; most painful high school wrestling moves; marymount housing; x1 tv box model number; 2 bedroom house for sale in greenford; dreamnotfound comic; Enterprise; Workplace; forced hubby to suck black . The theories on why so much gold and other artifacts and valuables would be stashed at this remote peak has seen many theories spring up, such as that it was treasure that the Apaches had stolen, the hoard of the founder of New Mexico as a Spanish colony, Don Juan de Onate, or the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmillian, who served as Mexicos emperor in the 1860s. Two years later, he married Violet Lena Boles, which would further complicate ownership of the treasure rights for years to come. The affidavit states: I, Thayer Snipes, first being duly sworn, on my oath state: That in the latter part of 1972, I had stopped by the Airport Chevron Station at the corner of Airway Blvd. A compelling argument that connects the lost treasure of the Knights Templar to the mysterious money pit on Oak Island, Nova Scotia, that has baffled treasure hunters for two centuries Fascinating occult detective work linking the Cathars, the Scottish Masons, and Renne-le-Chateau to t. The Treasure of the Knights Templar While one can only . New York Times, July 29, 1992 That about a month after that, I heard E.M. had been beaten to death in California. After telling her what he had seen and shown her the loot, she insisted he go back into the mine for one of the iron bars. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. However, with the discovery of gold, the treaty was broken in 1878, and Victorio went on the warpath. Besides coins and bars, there were apparently other valuables down there as well, including documents dated to 1797 written by Pope Pius III, but mostly Doc was all about the gold and the coins, concentrating on all of that loot hidden down there in the earth and ignoring many of the other artifacts. The whole truth will probably never be known, but there is no doubt that a treasure existed. The charges concerning LBJs involvement included the following: According to this same source, Victorio Peak was just like a private vault to certain high-ranking people. They would go in periodically and get what they wanted. Lampros, for example, described having his photograph taken with Colonel Willard E. Holt of Lordsburg, New Mexico; each held an end of a bar while it was being sawed in half. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. Finally in 1996 the crew broke into a room that was 60 feet high and six feet wide. 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. As all of this was going on, it had become no secret that the peak was supposed to harbor possibly billions of dollars in gold, and there were people willing to go in and risk their lives to find it. 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. He was barely able to lift one, much less think of carrying it back to the surface. [2], "Following 1937 Story of Buried Gold, Family Searches New Mexico's Sands", What Men Call Treasure: The Search for Gold at Victorio Peak, "Treasure or Treachery? : Did 'Doc' Noss Really Find Caverns of Gold or Did He Pull Off a Hoax That Has Plagued His Kin for Years? The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. Gold coins, jewels, and strange artifacts filled the small chambers. Edward Atkins of Decatur, Illinois, had been a claimant to the peaks gold and was vigorously pursuing that claim via attorney Darrell Holmes of Athens, Georgia, when Holmes died under mysterious circumstances. The Mystery Of The Lost Victorio Peak Treasure, a group of researchers who published their findings. 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. 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. This was shortly before a much-publicized expedition, entitled Operation Goldfinder, took place at the site in March 1977. Noss refused to obey, and Ryan fired again, hitting Noss in the head, killing him instantly. He assumed that he had found an old mining shaft, but as he did not have the proper equipment to investigate it, he went back to the camp to tell his wife, but the two kept it to themselves, planning to come back and explore that mysterious tunnel into the dark on their own. If the treasure was real, Noss had poor timing. 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. 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. All Rights Reserved. However, the expert won the argument. They supposedly found no sign of the treasure. 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. 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. In effect, no one could mine the treasure, and that included the Army and Babe Noss. As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. Background research into the enormous wealth contained in the caverns of Victorio Peak revealed many eyewitness reports of the gold. Reaching a compromise, the military allowed Expeditions Unlimited, representing all of the claimants, to excavate the peak in 1977. Eventually she brought her case to the military, but the alleged bonanza had vanished. While Babe looked on from above, Doc inched his way down the narrow passageway into the mountain nearly 60 feet. The affidavit states, in part: In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough [sic] poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. That while visiting Foss, a man we both knew, E.M. Guthrie, drove in to the station in a late model Ford Thunderbird. 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. Part II: The bizarre history of Victorio Peak continues to unravel as the Army, the Treasury Department and the Secret Service authorize a top secret operation aimed at locating and bringing out the gold. Near the bottom, he encountered a huge boulder hanging from the ceiling, almost blocking his way. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. When Maxmillian heard of the plot to assassinate him, he moved his gold and treasures out of Mexico. 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.. By the way, Noss is also called "Doc" because he often. 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. His obsession with this spelled the end of his marriage, and still he was undeterred to re-access his hoard. and Montana Ave. in El Paso, Texas, to visit with a friend, Frank Foss, owner of the station. In the Fall of 1939, Doc wanted to enlarge the passageway into Victorio Peak so that the treasures could be more easily removed. And for good reason. 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. Fast and free shipping free returns cash on delivery available on eligible purchase. In the spring of 1938 he and his wife made a trip to Santa Fe in order to apply for legal ownership of the land, several mining claims, and a treasure trove claim, which he successfully acquired, making his claim on the treasure legal. But with all that gold to be extracted, assuming the U.S. Government hadn't already looted the peak, Ova and others were still on the hunt, perhaps in part because the price of gold was going up. He would then spend the next decade selling some of the treasure he did have on the black market and trying to regain access to no avail, the thousands of remaining gold bars out of his reach. 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 fortune of a Mexican emperor? His main source of income cut off, and his marriage to Babe already deteriorated, Noss was desperate to sell his remaining gold bars on the black market. In 1937, the peak was miles from nowhere. A K-Pop Star, a DJ and a Japanese Billionaire May Beat NASA to the Moon, Invisibility Coats, Evil AI Santa, UFO Database for Pilots, Baby Loch Ness Monster and More Mysterious News Briefly, Winged Monsters That Aren't Mothman: But That Are Just as Amazing, More on the Mysterious Bigfoot: The UFO Connection, Odd Behavior and the Bizarre Vanishing of Bryce Laspisa, When UFOs and Mind-Control Come Together, Things Get Crazy: MK-Ultra, UFOs: When Conspiracies, The War of the Worlds, and an "Iron Mountain" Come Together. Although it did indeed look to be just a tarnished hunk of worthless metal, Ova suspected differently, and after buffing away the layer of grime she found what she was looking for. 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. 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. Legend says he sent a palace full of valuables to the United States to be hidden. Though caught trespassing and escorted from the area, the men reported observing several men in Army fatigues upon the peak. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. One of the problems Noss faced at the time was that this was all highly illegal, as the Gold Act passed just a few years before his discovery had forbidden private owner ship of gold, but he meant to remedy this. In September of 1968, a civilian security guard from White Sands Missile Range named Clarence McDonald went out to the peak with businessman Lynn Porter and Porters friend on a hunting trip to the peak, and would purportedly find a passage into the peak that led to stacks of gold bars in a chamber. The cave was covering a small tunnel, originally thought to be an abandoned mineshaft. Then, in 1961 the Army would send a convoy of men with Fiege in order to assess whether the claims were true, but they were unable to get back into the entrance, as it had since collapsed. Still another source reported knowledge of aircraft movements of the gold from Chihuahua to Vancouver, British Columbia, during the period of Johnsons presidency. The determined Noss knew he needed help, but was extremely careful about who he chose to bring back to the peak with him, taking along only close family and friends to help him remove the the heavy gold bars, which could weigh up to 100 pounds each. While out scouting the area, Noss did not manage to find any deer, but he did find something rather strange out there in those badlands, which would start one of the biggest mysteries in New Mexico history. 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. It would also explain the presence of the Wells Fargo bags, packsaddles, letters, and other artifacts dating to Victorios time. Unable to sell the gold bars on the open market, Noss was stymied but continued to work steadily to remove the treasure. Where are the various stashes that Doc Noss supposedly hid all over the desert? Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. Lifting the rock, he found a hole that led straight down into the mountain. The New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum is located at 4100 Dripping Springs Road in Las Cruces. Finally, others believe that the treasures were hidden by Chief Victorio, for whom the peak is named. The buying entity was a Middle Eastern principal, Shriver said. The Victorio Peak Mystery book. There are countless historical figures whose bodies. On each trip, Doc would retrieve two gold bars and as many artifacts as he could carry. 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. After the discovery, Fiege told several people that he had caved in the roof and walls to make it look like the tunnel ended. A major effort was made to break into an apparent massive underground cave, but after much effort and only 50 feet from where they believed the "treasure room" was located, the group encountered unstable rock and had to seek a different passageway. The horde of an Apache chief? Jolley would later say of the operation: 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. He would mine the chambers of Victorio Peak nearly every day, bringing up an estimated 200 to 350 bars of gold, but things were about to take a turn for the worse, and bring the dig grinding to a halt. 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