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. Four major groups of claimants accuse the oothers of trying to cheat them out of it. This could explain the skeletons in the cavern. 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. 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). In a deeper cavern, Doc found what he thought was a stack of worthless iron bars. The horde of an Apache chief? After 35 years of localized dispute, the Great White Sands Missile Range Lost Gold Treasure Affair has blossomed into a national mystery. It has banned treasure hunters from the range since 1963. Mrs. Noss believes Mr. Bailey's clients to be mili tary officers and perhaps some of her husband's old partners. In 1961, he returned to the desert and claims to have found 10 . After determining the accuracy of the two mens reports, the entire area was placed off-limits until an official investigation could be conducted. Shriver estimated the total amount of gold removed from Victorio Peak at 25 million troy ounces, of which 10 million came out in 1976. 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. Mrs. Noss now says she never heard about the divorce and as serts that she is his legal widow. In 1948, Doc met Charles Ryan, a Texan involved in drilling operations and oil exploration in West Texas. Now, researchers say the bar was. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. New Mexico does not have a sales tax. 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. However, Noss demanded to see the money before revealing the new hiding place. Joe Andregg, an electrician from Santa Fe, New Mexico, reflected on the days when he worked with Doc Noss in the late 1930s. 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. Most placer deposits in New Mexico had been discovered by 1900. 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. [6][5] By 1992, a grandson of Ova formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership to finance additional searching. 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. 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. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. 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. Many Noss family members and friends believe that the military exploited Babes claim and that the treasure is now gone. In 1963, the Army allowed a group of searchers, including Mrs. Noss, to search for the gold. The Army, which controls the missile range, insists there is no treasure and has never been any. [3][b], A 1961 search by the U.S. Armythe peak lies within White Sands Missile Rangewas stopped following a request to state officials by Noss's first wife, Ova. In 1955, the missile range was expanded and, the Army closed Victoria Peak to outsiders. And, on March 4, 1949, the day before Doc was shot, a small plane crashed near Victoria Peak killing the pilot and severely injuring Marvin Beckwith, son of the, first Mrs. Noss. Mr. Bailey later dropped the matter. 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. 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. 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. 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). Denied entry by the courts until legalities could determine the legal owner of the mine; Doc feared Ryan would back out of the deal. A treaty was reached between the tribe and the Federal government in Washington that the Indians could stay upon the land in New Mexico. Forrest . In 1797, when the work of the Spanish missionaries had almost come to an end, there was an old Spanish soldier who was at his death bed. In 1937, the peak was miles from nowhere. 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. The rate of this tax varies from 5.125% to 8.8675% depending on where the business is . 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 . Case He was barely able to lift one, much less think of carrying it back to the surface. Word of the Doc Noss treasure spread, and keeping people out of the area was no easy chore. 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. After he got back to the surface, Doc told Ova what he had seen, and almost as an afterthought mentioned the long row of metal bars. He was also known to take prisoners back to the Basin, where he subjected them to elaborate torture tests before killing them. 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. 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. 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 . The world's first atomic bomb was detonated here on July 16, 1945. He did, only to find that in the short, three-day interim the major had been whisked away, transferred to the Pentagon. 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. The Lue Map has very strange symbols. some of the gold to Mexico, in light planes. 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. After the death of Doc Noss, Ova and her family continued efforts to regain access to the big treasure room. Within moments he found more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the first. A prospector made an extraordinary discovery yesterday, when he found an "incredibly rare" 12-pound (5.5-kilogram) gold nugget under only 23 inches of dirt. In a hunt that began last Thursday, Mr. Delonas's group has been given one year to search for the gold. Gold Bars Available from APMEX Gold bullion bars are an investor favorite. By this time, Babes story had spread across the nation, profiled in several magazines and newspapers. Gold Bars 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. According to the security guard, Johnson and Connally headed a team which brought in sophisticated excavation equipment to remove gold from the peak, the most modern Ive ever seen, he said. Today, the Armys official position on the whereabouts of the gold remains cautious, maintaining that the burden of proof rests with the accusers. Mr. Noss's ex-wife was barred from searching in the 1950's, when the Army extended the White Sands borders to include Victorio Peak. But while trying to blast his way to the gold in 1939, he accidentally closed the hole. 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. He also told his wife that there were enough gold and silver coins to load 60 to 80 mules.. They found nothing. I was just a kid, about 13 or 14 years old, he told this writer. The earliest reports of placer mining were in the 1600s along the northern Rio Grande. Mr. Delonas said the legend of the buried treasure obsessed the family for generations. 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. 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. It is one of the most celebrated legends of buried treasure in the history of the American West, a thriller that includes a gunfight, nuclear weapons and the Watergate hearings. White Sands is the nation's largest military installation, about the size of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. 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. 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. WHITE SANDS, N.M. Lost treasure stories are a dime a dozen in the Southwest. This Massive Mine in Utah Has Produced More Gold than Most States! 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. They even brought in their own security guards, he added. In 1981, a construction worker discovered the gold bar, weighing 4.25 lbs. One partner, Charles Ryan, shot and killed Doc on March 5, 1949, in Hatch, N. M., after an argument. But, she said, mint officers confiscated the five bars and gave her husband a receipt for $97,000. And we were poor and I guess a little dumb. To further complicate things, rumors swirled about various factions smuggling. The cast of characters ranges from John W. Dean 3d to Geronimo and the vocabulary is marked by double as a prefixas in doublecross, doubletalk and doubledealing. 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. Porter and his friends were amused at his story and McDonald, to prove that what he was saying was true, took the two other hunters on a moonlit drive to Victorio Peak. When it began to rain, Doc sought shelter under a rocky overhang near the mountains summit. 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 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. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. 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. I've heard that story at least 500 times. However, the expert won the argument. 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. Others believe that Noss found the treasure of Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. "We're treating the gold searchers just like any other client," said Jim Eckles, a spokesman for the White Sands range. Lampros later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences. 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. If the treasure was real, Noss had poor timing. Two airmen from nearby Holloman Air Force Base would later say that they had found the gold cavern from another natural opening in the side of the peak. Subsequently, he also filed several mining claims on and around Victorio Peak and a treasure trove claim. Beyond the Hembrillo Basin is a hundred-mile stretch of desert known as the Jornada del Muerto. Leon Trabuco's Gold A Mexican businessman buries 16 tons of gold in the New Mexico desert and then dies before telling anyone where it is. At one time, he brought out a crown, which contained 243 diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. The family declines to discuss the incident. 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. 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. Becoming even more complicated, a search of mining records failed to turn up any existing claims including that of Doc Noss. The Mystery Of The Lost Victorio Peak Treasure, a group of researchers who published their findings. The peak is riddled with a network of tunnels. 2003-2008 Church of Scientology International. South Pass City - A Look into Wyoming's Past. 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. Once again, Doc began to descend about 125 feet before the shaft again leveled off into a large natural cavern. Anyone can read what you share. That I knew E.M. Guthrie had taken an active personal interest in the fate of gold located in Victorio Peak by Doc Noss. Representative Harold Runnels, a Democrat whose district includes the White Sands range, has proposed a joint Federalstate search for the treasure. The mystery boils down to a single question: Was Milton (Doc) Noss telling the truth, or just a tall tale? The dispute was finally worked out when a federal court issued a compromise of sorts, which stated the Army would continue to use the lands surface, but no one would be allowed on the property without the Armys consent. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were stacked like cordwood.. Then, in 1942 or 1943, she isn't sure, he tried to blast the tunnel bigger in order to haul up more gold bars at one time. Doc Noss was extremely paranoid and buried everything he took out of the caves, not even trusting his wife, Babe. All Rights Reserved. For the next few years, Mr. Noss sought partners to help him find the gold. Docs object at the time of discovery, of course, was more than old bones. 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