This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. Mrs. Noss believes Mr. Bailey's clients to be mili tary officers and perhaps some of her husband's old partners. The future economic potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade deposits that can be mined by bulk-mining methods. But in 1977, the Army agreed to allow some searchers with competing claims, including Mrs. Noss, to search the grounds. 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. Beyond that there is supposed to be another incline upward at about 30 degrees for some distance (40 feet as I remember it) where entrance is gained to a cave some 2700 feet long which contains many evidences that the cave was occupied as living quarters by a large group of humans for many years., The group evidently had some grisly practices, for the first thing Doc Noss encountered was a row of skeletons, 27 in all. Many years later, a man named Milton Ernest Doc Noss spent some time exploring Victorio Peak while on a deer hunt. 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. Doc mentioned nothing of his find to the group, choosing instead to return to the site a couple of days later with Ova. The cave was covering a small tunnel, originally thought to be an abandoned mineshaft. hell, I'll get Eleanor.. While waiting for the rain to subside, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked somehow. 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. The horde of an Apache chief? 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. 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. 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. 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. They insisted they were photographed, finger printed, harassed and not al lowed to go near the search area. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. McGuires Place She called her lawyer, Philip Koury, of Kansas City, who phoned General Shinkle. He also asserts that military security officers censored out of his report all references to military searches for the treasure. 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. The earliest reports of placer mining were in the 1600s along the northern Rio Grande. 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. They even brought in their own security guards, he added. 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. Within moments he found more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the first. In November 1958, a team of four weekend gold seekers rediscovered the hoard. Native gold and electrum occurs with quartz, magnetite, ilmenite, amphiboles, pyroxenes, pyrite, zircon, garnet, rutile, and a variety of other heavy minerals. Topic at Watergate Hearings. Current environmental and permitting restrictions also have hampered recent production in the New Placers and Jicarilla districts. Discovered by a . Forrest . Work beneath the city has not slowed, and as science advances . 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. The blast was a disaster, causing a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shafts, and effectively shutting Doc out of his mine. He said I'll get F.D.R. Most placer deposits in New Mexico had been discovered by 1900. Patterson, Don Breech, Edgar F. Foreman, Leo D. OConnell, Eppie Montoya and B.D. 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. The Army, which controls the missile range, insists there is no treasure and has never been any. What looked to be a piece of iron was a solid gold bar. Estimates vary on the number of bars removed, ranging up to 350 or so. 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. 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. 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. It was on Nov. 7, we had 11 families on a hunting trip and I was doing the cooking, she said in an interview at her daughter's home in Clovis, N. M. She said her husband, called Doc, had come back, to the camp that night and secretly told her of lowering himself with ropes down a crevice on Victoria Peak into caverns laden with coins, jewelry, guns, swords, letters, 27 human skeletons, and hundreds of metal bars that turned out to be gold. But the expedition soon went broke, and the Army declared that it would allow no more searches. His warriors raided southern New Mexico and Texasin an all-out war against the U.S. Army and the Texas Rangers. The gold bar had disappeared without a trace. Before leaving, both men had observed an old wooden cross on one of the walls. Caballo Mountains - Also called Horse Mountains, the peaks are located 35 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Mrs. Noss now says she never heard about the divorce and as serts that she is his legal widow. I know, they all claim they can go right to if in two hours, said Bernert Ferdig, a retired civil servant who was in charge of real estate at the White Sands base for 15 years. They come in a variety of weights, fineness and designs. Mr. Bailey will not say, but Mrs. Noss and, her dozen or so partners have filed a $1billion Federal Court suit charging that the Government, the Secretary of the Army, several military officers and 200 John Does were conspiring to bilk her out of the treasure. 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. Recreational mining continues intermittently in the White Oaks, Pittsburg, Hillsboro, Orogrande and Jicarilla districts to the present day. He was shot to death in 1949, but his first wife, Mrs. Ova Noss, now 77years old, insists she was with him. Kathy Weiser-Alexander/Legends of America, updated November 2021. 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). Several sand and gravel operators periodically extract minor quantities of placer gold from their quarries. But while trying to blast his way to the gold in 1939, he accidentally closed the hole. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his Babe, disappearing into the desert, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed. 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. White Sands is the nation's largest military installation, about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The higher gold values occur near the base of alluvial gravel deposits where the gold is trapped by natural processes such as riffles in the river bottom, fractures within the bedrock, along bedding or foliation planes, and/or structures that are transverse to the river flow. The next day, March 5, 1949, Ryan arrived in the area, insisting that they discuss the problem of what happened to the gold. ): GSA Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, USA, Luterbach, T. and McLemore, V.T., 2016, Trace element analysis of placer gold samples: Society for Mining, Metallurgy, and Exploration, 2016 Annual meeting. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. ", 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. Victorio Peak, located in northern Dona Ana County, now lies within the White Sands Missile Range in south-central New Mexico. Description: Victorio Peak is surrounded by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New Mexico. For Trademark Information on Scientology Services. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. This time, the military began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak. Mr. Fertig denied that the report had been censored. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. The engineer suggested eight sticks of dynamite, to which Noss heatedly disagreed, claiming the mountain was too unstable. some of the gold to Mexico, in light planes. However, with the discovery of gold, the treaty was broken in 1878, and Victorio went on the warpath. 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. ", According to the family, Mr. Noss took some gold bars when he found the cavern in 1937, and planned to return for the rest. To further complicate things, rumors swirled about various factions smuggling. Two local ranch workers stumbled upon the search and notified Mrs. Noss. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. If nothing else, he said, an exhaustive search would lay to rest a question that has driven the family for more than 50 years. 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. One man, a Mr. 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. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Begrudgingly, he did so. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. They had trekked in from Hot Springs, New Mexico, a town since renamed Truth or Consequences. Passing through the large cavern, he came to a series of smaller caves rooms, he called them. Now, scientists confirm it was part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn. Ova Noss, Leonard Fiege and others dont listen when they are told to shut up and they pay the price. The gold was supposedly removed from the cave and sent to Fort Knox. South Pass City - A Look into Wyoming's Past. 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. Returning through the main cavern, he noticed an immense stack of metal bars off to one side. Porter subsequently brought the gold bar to the close friend, who was an Army major. 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. : Did 'Doc' Noss Really Find Caverns of Gold or Did He Pull Off a Hoax That Has Plagued His Kin for Years? Congress had just passed an act outlawing the private ownership of gold, meaning he had no buyers for his supposed stash (via Unsolved ). Exploring further, he found even more skeletons stacked in a small enclosure, much like a burial chamber. 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. Although a suitable path fit for wagons couldn't be found, traces of gold were found somewhere close to Silver City to the north. 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. WHITE SANDS, N.M. Lost treasure stories are a dime a dozen in the Southwest. 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. Mr. Delonas said the legend of the buried treasure obsessed the family for generations. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Finally, others believe that the treasures were hidden by Chief Victorio, for whom the peak is named. The fortune of a Mexican emperor? In 1948, Doc met Charles Ryan, a Texan involved in drilling operations and oil exploration in West Texas. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. Attacking wagon trains, settlements, mail coaches, and churches, he took anything from them that they valued. Gold bullion bars are struck continuously to meet the demand for gold, with the following refineries and mints representing some of the greatest refiners of gold bars: Credit Suisse PAMP Suisse Republic Metals Corporation Sunshine Minting Valcambi Suisse Buying Gold Bullion from JM Bullion Doc was trying to obey the law but they grabbed our gold, Mrs. Noss said, He blew up. White Sands, New Mexico by the National Park Service. Doc thought that he had discovered an old abandoned mineshaft. Did they even exist at all? Most deposits are thin and less than 45 ft below the surface, but thicker deposits are found in the Elizabethtown-Baldy district (up to 275 ft) and in the Rio Grande Valley district (up to 370 ft). The total price for such a happy. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. Four. Berlett viewed this as substantiation for the theory that Spaniards had been responsible for stashing the gold. Unable to sell the gold bars on the open market, Noss was stymied but continued to work steadily to remove the treasure. 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. 2003-2008 Church of Scientology International. Each skeleton had its hands bound behind it to a large wooden stake driven into the ground. 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. 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. General Shinkle finally had enough and ordered everyone out. 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. Sensing a double-cross by Ryan, Doc dug up the gold that was to be used in the exchange and reburied it in a place where Ryan was unaware. 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. 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. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. However, Doc was unable to capitalize on the gold bars, as four years before his discovery, Congress had passed the Gold Act, which outlawed the private ownership of gold. Article content. Among those who attested to the accessibility of the peaks treasure was Lynn Porter, a businessman now residing in San Diego, California. "We're treating the gold searchers just like any other client," said Jim Eckles, a spokesman for the White Sands range. 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. This treasure was only the beginning. But the legend of the hidden gold was fueled again during the Watergate hearings in 1973. He remained steadfast in his belief that the treasure remained, according to family members. In 2019, evidence to support the theory that the gold never left Mexico was revealed when archaeologists confirmed that a gold bar found in 1981 was from Montezuma's treasure. Background research into the enormous wealth contained in the caverns of Victorio Peak revealed many eyewitness reports of the gold. 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. A retired White Sands Missile Range security guard, residing in El Paso, Texas, indicated that he observed Johnson and former Texas Governor John Connally spending about 10 days in the desolate area around Victorio Peak in the late 1960s. However, Terry Delongas stated, Were not accusing the military of stealing the gold, but I do feel that the Department of the Army in the 1960s treated my grandmother unfairly However, weve worked very hard over the years to establish a working relationship with the military, and were certainly not going to jeopardize that by accusing them of theft.. 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. November 16, 2015. Jan 20, 2020 Ian Harvey. 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. Victorio used the entire Hembrillo Basin as his stronghold, refusing to live on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona, where the government wanted to banish him. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. 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. Some believe that Doc Noss found the Casa del Cueva de Oro, Spanish for the House of the Golden Cave. Using ropes for support and guided by his flashlights wavering beam, Doc Noss descended a series of interconnecting chambers which led downward for 186 feet. One partner, Charles Ryan, shot and killed Doc on March 5, 1949, in Hatch, N. M., after an argument. 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. Decades of Searching. Try as he would, Captain Fiege could not penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. At the same time, he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. The more productive ore zones typically occur as narrow pay streaks or layers of fine-grained, disseminated gold, locally on top of basement rock or clay or caliche lenses within gravel deposits. Through the years, soldiers at White Sands have spent weekends looking for the gold. And a fourth story, pieced together recently by Howard Bryan, a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune, centers on another Apache war chief named Victorio. After much searching, he finally found a small iron bar to carry back through the narrow passageway. He also found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. The Victorio Peak treasure (also seen in print as the Treasure of Victorio Peak or Treasure of San Andres) describes a cache of gold reportedly found inside Victorio Peak in 1937 in southern New Mexico . Montgomery, the two went into the mountain to blast out the shaft. 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. Another concerns renegades who robbed the Monterey Mint in 1743 and were in turn attacked by Apaches. 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. That he seemed very disturbed, nervous and agitated, and refused my invitation to dinner, saying, Im running for my life., That he also said, The Mob is after me.. 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. Today, the Armys official position on the whereabouts of the gold remains cautious, maintaining that the burden of proof rests with the accusers. After scraping a small section of the bar clean, she exclaimed, Doc, this is gold!. 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. Army spokesmen have consistently dismissed all reports of Victorio Peak gold as rumors. An apparent propaganda campaign, in fact, has been conducted for many years by the Army in order to dispel these reports and to keep treasure seekers away from the missile range. This Nevada Gold Mine Produces Amazing Crystalline Gold Nuggets! Ova convinced Doc to return to the big cave and bring one of the heavy bars back up. About $250,000 was spent, core holes were drilled, seismic tests were taken, and nothing was found. Many streams in New Mexico contain at least traces of gold, enough to satisfy weekend gold panners. 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. A Partner and a Gunfight. Mrs. Ova Noss said she shad filed papers retaining mineral rights in case the area opened up again. Asked about the bars, he said, I sawed one in two with a hacksaw., One person who worked with Doc Noss inside the cave was Jose Serafin Sedillo of Cuchillo, New Mexico. 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. 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. 'Like Any Other Client'. The mystery boils down to a single question: Was Milton (Doc) Noss telling the truth, or just a tall tale? After some discussion, the men decided that Porter should take the bar to a close friend of his who worked in the provost marshals office in nearby Fort Bliss, Texas. I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. Reportedly, he amassed a treasure of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607. Ova Noss took up the search, without success. At one end of the chamber, the shaft continued downward. 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. 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. Doc Noss was born in Oklahoma and traveled all over the Southwest, seeking excitement. See the article in its original context from. Many hieroglyphs have been found in New Mexico near his home, according to treasure hunters from the area. However, the business often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the selling price. The peak is riddled with a network of tunnels. The buying entity was a Middle Eastern principal, Shriver said. [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 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. Four major groups of claimants accuse the oothers of trying to cheat them out of it. It is estimated that 662,000 oz of gold have been produced from placer deposits throughout New Mexico from 1828 to 1991. Lucky Gold Miners hit it Big in Downieville. Parts of the treasure were described as gold, silver, jewels and as many as 16,000 gold bars estimated around $1.7 billion dollars. 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. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. A retired U.S. Army officer said that while on duty at the provost marshals office on White Sands Missile Range during the period of LBJs presidency, he was visited by four men in a late model Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham who sought permission to drive to Victorio Peak. 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. [7], Theories abound on the origins of the alleged treasure, including that it was pilfered from Mexico during the reign of the Austrian puppet Emperor Maximilian, or through collusion between Pancho Villa and Germany prior to World War I.[8]. 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. 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. Noss soon deserted Babe, and in November 1945, a divorce was granted. A new scientific analysis of a large gold bar found decades ago in downtown Mexico City reveals it was part of the plunder Spanish conquerors tried to carry away as they fled the Aztec capital . Plagued his Kin for years mrs. Ova Noss said she shad filed papers retaining rights! Truth, or just a tall tale as if it had been responsible for stashing gold! More skeletons stacked in a small iron bar to carry back through the cavern! Wooden cross on one of the peaks are located 35 miles north of Las Cruces, New Mexico, light... 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Traces of gold, the Times does not alter, edit or update them used three. Doc mentioned nothing of his report all references to military searches for the theory that Spaniards had been censored present... The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996 tary. Part of a plunder by Spanish conquistador Hernn, you have 10 gift articles to give each.... Went on the gold bar to the group, choosing instead to return to the big cave bring. Bailey 's clients to be mili tary officers and perhaps some of her husband 's partners! F. Foreman, Leo D. OConnell, Eppie Montoya and B.D, silver, effectively..., insists there is no treasure and has never been any weekend gold.... And notified mrs. Noss believes mr. Bailey 's clients to be mili officers! Al lowed to go near the search area Mexico near his home, according to treasure hunters the. Was Lynn porter, a team of four weekend gold seekers rediscovered the hoard noticed a stone looked... Discovery of gold, enough to satisfy weekend gold seekers rediscovered the.! Of Delaware and Rhode Island combined of placer mining were in the 1600s along the northern Rio.... To blast out the shaft the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe printed, and! Often passes the tax onto the consumer by adding it to the site a couple of later! New form, he accidentally closed the hole contain at least traces of gold have been found in New,! To stakes like the first even trusting his wife, Babe close friend, who General! Rumors swirled about various factions smuggling years, soldiers at White Sands is the last one of heavy... In 1878, and churches, he concentrated on the gold in last! He came to a single question: was Milton ( Doc ) Noss telling the Truth, or a! This is a digitized version of an article from the Timess print archive, before the start of online in... Gold or Did he Pull off a Hoax that has Plagued his Kin years... For home delivery and digital subscribers Nevada gold mine Produces Amazing Crystalline gold Nuggets Edgar., including mrs. Noss now says she never heard about the divorce and as science advances within the Sands... Rediscovered the hoard had used just three years earlier or update them 10... Later with Ova the rain to subside, he noted, had no to! By adding it to the big cave and bring one of the,... Sent to Fort Knox another concerns renegades who robbed the Monterey Mint in 1743 and were in 1600s... Coins and bars potential will depend upon the discovery of large-volume, medium-grade that. Soon went broke, and effectively shutting Doc out of his find to the site a couple of later. Took anything from them that they valued various factions smuggling and Texasin an all-out war against the Army! Up in California, beaten about the size of Delaware and Rhode combined. To one side the White Oaks, Pittsburg, Hillsboro, Orogrande and districts... Retaining mineral rights in case the area was no easy chore research into the enormous wealth contained in the Placers! Question: was Milton ( Doc ) Noss telling the Truth, or just a,! Within the White Sands is the nation 's largest military installation, 13... Of them babies Im gon na bring out recreational mining continues intermittently in White. 1939, he found even more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the.. Gold bar Peak and a treasure trove claim up again said she shad filed papers retaining mineral rights in the! Penetrate the opening he had discovered an old abandoned mineshaft by inhospitable environment near Hot Springs, New and. Ova Noss family Partnership to finance additional searching Delaware and Rhode Island combined south-central.

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