New Mexico is a complex tapestry of natural beauty with mountains the dominant feature in the landscape. Except for the eastern fringe, no part of the state is without them. Some maps name seventy-three ranges, from Animas to Zuni. They include seven peaks rising above 13,000 feet, eighty-five more than two miles high, and more than three hundred notable enough to warrant names. All are part of the Southern Rockies, and all have their own strange tales of legends and myths. No legend, however, is more mysterious than the one associated with Victorio Peak.

Victorio Peak is a nondescript, craggy outcropping of rock barely five hundred feet tall. It is nestled near the center of a dry desert lake known as the Hembrillo Basin in the desolate wastelands of northern Dona Ana County in the southern part of the state. The Basin is a lonesome, empty place with miles and miles of solitude broken neither by fence post nor telephone wires. The nearest settlements are forty miles distant, and getting to the rugged sentinel in the forbidding Basin requires skill and dexterity in traversing the barren landscape.

The Hembrillo Basin itself is the southern gateway to the vast hundred mile stretch of blistering, arid desert known as the Jornada del Muerto. It is Spanish for "Journey of Death," and it is just that. Back in the days of early Spanish exploration, travelers would sometimes leave the lush Rio Grande Valley about fifteen miles north of Las Cruces at a place where the river cut west. Trying to continue their journey north across the barren wasteland toward Socorro usually turned into a big mistake. This route did shorten their trip by several days, but it also took the travelers into the domain of hostile Apache Indians. Many died in the Indian attacks, and many more in the unforgiving desert. It seems ironic that this bleak, forbidding wasteland would hold one of the most baffling mysteries of all time.

If ever anyone was destined to find a fortune in hidden gold, that person was Milton Ernest "Doc" Noss. He was born in Oklahoma, and he claimed that it was the Cheyenne half of him which led him on the fringe of excitement all his life. He loved the unknown, and took any variety of jobs all over the Southwest. Routine things bored him, and he never stayed too long in any one place. If adventure called, Doc was the first one on the trail.

On one of his frequent trips through southern New Mexico, he met a pretty brown-haired woman named Ova Beckworth. She was loving and generous and absolutely enamored with Doc. In 1933, Doc married Ova, whom he affectionately nicknamed "Babe." They settled down in Hot Springs, which now goes under the name of Truth or Consequences in honor of a popular television game show of the 1950’s. It was here that Doc opened a foot clinic. If he was any kind of medical doctor, the records have not been found to prove it.

Hot Springs was known as one of the Southwest’s best health resorts. People from all over the country came to ease their aches and pains in the healing, warm water, soak up the warm sunshine, and bask in the warm New Mexico hospitality. It was not long before Babe and Doc made many friends.

In November 1937, Doc, Babe, and four others left on a deer hunt into the Hembrillo Basin. They drove toward Victorio Peak, setting up camp on the desert floor not far from the base of the peak. Early the next morning, the men headed into the wilderness, leaving the women in camp. Doc was a loner, and not wanting to hunt with so many others around, he headed toward Victorio Peak to hunt by himself.

As Doc scouted around the base of the mountain, it began to drizzle. It was only a light rain, but a cold rain, and he decided to seek shelter. Since Victorio Peak is a barren, treeless pinnacle of rock and dirt, he scampered up the peak, searching for a rocky overhang large enough to scoot under. Near the summit, he spied a huge boulder and headed toward it. He saw evidence of early inhabitants, but did not know if they had lived there long, or merely used it as a temporary shelter the way he was doing. In the dim light, while waiting for the rain to subside, he noticed a stone that looked as if it had been worked in some fashion. He reached down, but was unable to budge it. Carefully digging around it, he was finally able to work his hands under it. When he lifted it clear, he found a hole which appeared to lead straight down into the heart of the mountain.

Instantly intrigued, Doc ignored the rain and peered over the side into the gaping blackness. He saw what he took to be an old, man-made shaft with a thick, wooden pole attached at one side. The pole had deep gouges at regular intervals for footholds and appeared rotten, leading Doc to believe the opening was the entrance to an ancient, abandoned mine shaft. He totally forgot all about hunting, as he carefully positioned himself under the boulder out of the rain. He planned adventure of a different sort.

When it stopped raining, Doc returned to camp and told Babe of his discovery, cautioning her not to tell the others. It was his plan to return later and investigate the shaft privately. If it was an abandoned mine, it would not matter, but if he found gold, he did not want to share it with anyone.

Several days later, Doc and Babe Noss returned to Victorio Peak with ropes and flashlights. When Doc inched his way down through the tight, narrow passage into the mountain, he uncovered the most controversial subject in New Mexico history---a topic involving unimaginable wealth, murder and mystery. The participants are as varied as they are unique. They appear to range from Don Juan de Onate’s brutal conquest of New Mexico in the 16th Century to our federal government of today, encompassing 18th Century Mexican friars and a legendary 19th Century Apache war chief along the way. It is one of the most incredible chapters in American history.

According to reports, Doc’s initial journey down the shaft was nothing less than spectacular. After testing the wooden pole attached at one side and deciding it was too risky for his weight, he descended by rope nearly sixty feet through the narrow opening. Near the bottom he encountered a huge boulder hanging from the ceiling, almost blocking his way. Unknown to him at the time, this boulder would later play an important role in his adventure.

At the bottom of the narrow shaft was a chamber about the size of a small room with drawings around the walls. Doc thought these sketches were made by Indians, as they were crude and stick-like. Some were painted, while others were chiseled into the rock face. At the other end of the chamber, the shaft continued sloping downward. Descending another hundred and twenty feet before it leveled off, Doc found that the passageway emptied into a huge, natural cavern large enough "for a freight train to pass through." He saw several smaller rooms chiseled from the rock along one wall.

As Doc inched his way across the great cavern, he made a terrifying discovery...a human skeleton. The hands were bound behind the back, and the skeleton was kneeling, securely tied to a stake driven into the ground, as if the person had been deliberately left there to die. Before leaving the room, he found more skeletons, most of them bound and secured to stakes like the first. Some skeletons were found stacked in a small enclosure, as if in a burial chamber. All told, he reportedly found twenty-seven human skeletons in the caverns of the mountain.

As Doc explored the side caverns of Victorio Peak, he found amazing riches amounting to extreme wealth by today’s standards. Jewels, coins, saddles, and priceless artifacts were everywhere, including a gold statue of the Virgin Mary. In one chamber, he found an old Wells Fargo box and leather pouches neatly stacked to the ceiling. He even found some old letters, the most recent of which was dated 1880. On the lid of one old chest were words written in old English script. The contents of the caverns appeared to represent several different nationalities, and it baffled him.

These chests and artifacts were only the tip of the iceberg. In a deeper cavern, Doc found what he thought was a stack of worthless pig-iron bars. He estimated there were over sixteen thousand bars weighing over forty pounds apiece "stacked up against the wall like cordwood." He was barely able to lift one, much less think of carrying it back to the surface. Later, the wealth in the cave was calculated to be worth more than two billion dollars. No matter what the estimate, it was clear that Doc had found a substantial treasure, much of it in gold bullion.

Doc filled his pockets with gold coins, grabbed a couple of jeweled swords, and laboriously returned to Babe waiting anxiously at the surface. After telling her of what he had seen and showing her the loot, she insisted he go back into the mine for one of the pig-iron bars. After much searching, he finally found a small iron bar that he could carry back through the narrow passageway, but it was difficult maneuvering through the tight passage with the heavy bar. When he reached the surface, he told Babe, "This is the last one of them babies I’m gonna bring out."

By then, it was late afternoon, the sun almost on the horizon. When Babe rolled the bar over, she noticed a yellow gleam where the gravel of the hillside had scratched off centuries of black grime. She showed the gold metal to Doc. He said, "Well Babe, if it’s gold, and all that other is gold like it, we can call John D. Rockefeller a tramp."

From the time Doc Noss discovered the treasure in Victorio Peak, he and Babe spent every free moment exploring the tunnels that led deep inside the mountain. They began living in a tent at the base of the peak, working the claim each day for hours on end. On each trip, Doc would retrieve two gold bars and artifacts. At one time, he brought out a crown that Babe cleaned in her sink in town. According to Babe’s report, it contained two hundred forty-three diamonds and one pigeon-blood ruby. Yet, Doc trusted no one, not even his wife. He disappeared at night into the desert with his booty, hiding pieces of the treasure in places that he never revealed.

Among the artifacts Doc is reported to have retrieved from the cache were four codices---leather pages with hand-tooled instructions---one dated 1797. According to Doc, the codices were reburied in the desert in a chest with other artifacts. Although the originals have never been recovered, there was a copy of one, a translation of which explains the significance of the number seven, according to Pope Pius III.

"Seven is the holy number," the passage begins. It then continues for several lines before ending with a cryptic message: "In seven languages, seven signs, and languages in seven foreign nations, look for the Seven Cities of Gold. Seventy miles north of El Paso del Norte in the seventh peak, Soledad, these cities have seven sealed doors, three sealed toward the rising of the Sol sun, three sealed toward the setting of the Sol sun, one deep within Casa del Cueva de Oro, at high noon. Receive health, wealth, and honor."

Believers say that Doc Noss found the Casa del Cueva de Oro, Spanish for the House of the Golden Cave. "Soledad" was the former name of Victorio Peak, and Doc apparently found the seventh door located "at high noon," but the promised health, wealth, and honor were denied him. Four years before his discovery, Congress had passed the Gold Act, which outlawed the private ownership of gold. Doc was unable to profit from his treasure on the open market.

When Doc’s story eventually hit the headlines, scholars began speculating on how the enormous treasure could have come to be stashed inside Victorio Peak. It was not hard to come up with theories. New Mexico has undergone a lot of transition from the time of the earliest friars to modern time. One of the theories scholars advanced dates back to Don Juan de Onate, who, in 1598, founded New Mexico as a Spanish colony. He knew the tales of the Seven Cities of Gold, and he surely sought them. But Onate was cruel, brutally subjugating the Indians to do his bidding. He beat and tortured them, forcing them to mine gold and silver. It has been reported that he amassed a treasure of gold, silver and jewels before being ordered to Mexico City in 1607. If he did not take the fortune with him, he must have stored it somewhere…Victorio Peak perhaps?

Another theory is that the treasure belonged to a Catholic missionary named Felipe La Rue, or La Ruz, as church documents are said to give his name. He was a native of France and was among the small group of priests who volunteered for service in Mexico. His party sailed to Florida, crossed the Gulf of Mexico to Vera Cruz, and from there, it went to Mexico City by ox cart. After a short rest, Padre La Rue left for the north, where he took up his work among the Indians and peons at a large hacienda near what is now the city of Chihuahua, reaching there in 1798.

From the people at his new station, he heard stories about a fabulous source of rich minerals in the mountains to the north. If he was interested in these stories, he did not reveal it to others. Instead, he continued with his teachings and ministering to the sick and spiritual needs of his small parish. Among his parishioners was an old man, who had been an explorer and soldier of fortune during his youth. This man had traveled widely over the country to the north, and as Padre La Rue personally cared for this ailing old man, the two became good friends.

One day, Padre La Rue asked about the riches which lay to the north. The old man said that if the good priest wanted gold, there was a rich deposit of it located high in the mountains about two days’ travel north of El Paso del Norte, which is the present-day site of El Paso, Texas. According to the legend, the man said, "After one day’s travel from El Paso del Norte, you will come to three small peaks yet further to the north. Upon first sight of these peaks, turn to the east and cross the desert toward the mountains. In the mountains, you will find a basin where there is a spring at the foot of a solitary peak. On this peak, you will find gold." A few days later, the old man died.

It was not until the crops failed that Padre La Rue thought of the solitary peak filled with gold. His little parish needed water and a better climate, and he called everyone together, asking if they would follow him north. They all agreed, and the little party set out for their new country. After crossing El Paso del Norte, they followed the course of the Rio Grande to the small village of La Mesilla near Las Cruces. North of there, they sighted the three peaks and turned east across the dreaded Jornada del Muerto, finally arriving in the San Andreas Mountains. After a couple of days of exploration, they located a basin in which there was a spring at the base of a solitary peak, just as the old man had said.

Scholars all believe this basin was the Hembrillo Basin, and the solitary peak was Soledad Peak. After a fierce battle between the Army and Chief Victorio of the Apaches in 1880, the peak assumed a new name of Victorio Peak. It is not to be confused with Victoria Peak in the Black Range Mountains near Kingston, New Mexico.

Padre La Rue established a crude camp and sent the men out to search for the gold the old man had promised was there. On one side of the peak, they located a rich vein, ultimately working the mine for years. They tunneled into the mountain and followed the vein downward. The deeper they went, the richer the ore became. The little priest assigned dozens of monks and Indians to mine the gold, form it into ingots and, except for whatever was needed for supplies, stack it along one wall of a natural cavern inside the mountain.

Word eventually reached church officials in Mexico City that the hacienda had been abandoned, and Padre La Rue’s tiny colony was missing. A search party went to investigate. When they returned and reported that the entire population had left for the mountains to the north, soldiers were dispatched with orders to locate the priest and demand an explanation.

It was when a small group was in La Mesilla purchasing supplies that they learned the Mexican Army was on the horizon. Hurrying to camp, they spread the alarm. It was one thing for Padre La Rue to leave his post without permission of church officials in Mexico City, but it was quite another not to deliver the Royal Fifth (or Quinta) of the gold for shipment to Spain. Padre La Rue was in a lot of trouble.

Padre La Rue immediately set about concealing all traces of the mine. Working day and night, knowing the soldiers were drawing ever closer, he had his little group labor to conceal the entrance. When the soldiers finally arrived and demanded to know where the gold came from which was used to purchase the supplies in La Mesilla, Padre La Rue refused to answer. He died under torture, as did many of his followers, and although the soldiers looked all over for evidence of a mine, they were forced to return to Mexico City with nothing to show for their long journey. The Lost Padre Mine, as it has been called ever since, went into the history pages as a beloved legend.

Many scholars think that Doc Noss stumbled upon the Lost Padre Mine, but there are a few who speculate that the treasure could be the missing wealth of Emperor Maxmilian. As emperor of Mexico in the 1860’s, Maxmilian attempted to get his gold out of Mexico, especially when he learned of an assassination plot. He was, in fact, assassinated in 1867. Legend says he sent a palace full of valuables to the United States, and it has never been found. Although it has been rumored that it went by ship and lies in deep waters off the coast of New Orleans, the victim of a particularly bad Gulf storm, the easiest route for the Maxmilian treasure train would have been through the New Mexico corridor into Texas. Strangely, there is an old rumor that it has been lost along the dunes of shifting lake bed in West Texas, the victim of banditry where all the bandits were killed by pursuing posse members. The truth is that no one knows anything for certain. Could the jewels and coins Doc saw have been part of Maxmilian’s missing fortune?

And how does Chief Victorio enter into the story? Well, the most colorful legend associated with the Victorio Peak treasure does concern the great Warm Springs Apache war chief. Victorio used the entire Hembrillo Basin as his stronghold. He absolutely refused to live on the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona where his people died from hunger and insect bites. Victorio’s land had always been in the mountains of New Mexico, and a treaty between the Federal government in Washington and his band had promised they could stay on those lands as long as the "mountains stand and the rivers flowed." With the discovery of gold in the mountains, such did not happen, and in 1878, the treaty was broken. Victorio went on the war path. Knowing how much the white man valued gold and having little use for it himself, he amassed huge amounts of the yellow mineral any way he could get it. He and his warriors raided throughout the Jornada and the Rio Grande Valley, attacking wagon trains, churches, immigrants, mail coaches, and anything else that promised riches. He raided the stage lines all over southern New Mexico and Texas in an all-out war against the U. S. Army and the Texas Rangers. He also took prisoners back to the Basin and subjected them to elaborate torture as a test of their bravery before killing them. Were the skeletons found inside Victorio Peak victims of Victorio’s raids?

On 7 April 1880, Victorio engaged in a fierce battle with a troop of the 9^th Cavalry Buffalo Soldiers at the mountain. After a bloody standoff that resulted in the deaths of many of the soldiers, the Army retreated. The peak was thereafter known as Victorio Peak in honor of the great chief. Many researchers believe that Victorio and his Apaches had an entrance into the mountain and that they used the cave to conceal the booty they looted from the surrounding areas. It would also explain the presence of the Wells Fargo bags, the pack saddles, the letters and other artifacts dating to Victorio’s time. Did the Apaches fight hard to protect their cache of treasures within the mountain?

It is doubtful Doc Noss cared anything about the historical value of the fortune inside the hollow peak. The pouches and packs, artifacts and leather goods were mostly ignored, while he concentrated on the gold coins and bars. Ever since he found the treasure, he worked stealthily to remove what he could of it. He never told any of friends what he was doing.

Finally, in the spring of 1938, Doc Noss and Babe went to Santa Fe to establish legal ownership of his find. He filed a lease with the State of New Mexico for the entire section of land surrounding Victorio Peak. Subsequent to that, he filed mining claims on and around Victorio Peak. He had it surveyed for an exact location, and then filed a treasure trove claim, which has become the historic Noss family claim to the treasure in Victorio Peak. With legal ownership established, he worked his claim openly, but he became super cautious. He took the gold bars out of the cavern and then hid them from everyone, including his own family, in a variety of locations all over the desert. Some were right by the county roads by certain marked telephone poles. Some were dropped in horse tanks at the nearby ranches. Some were just buried in the sand, and Doc would put a different colored rock over the top than was natural to that surrounding.

There was a lot of fear and probably some increasing paranoia in both Doc and Babe. As they solicited more and more help from friends, neighbors, and supporters, they became afraid that some of these people might try to steal some of the bullion that they had hidden around the Peak.

It was the Fall of 1939 when Doc made his great mistake. He decided to enlarge the passageway into Victorio Peak, reasoning that if he could rid the narrow quarters of the confining huge boulder hanging at the lower portion of the shaft, he could removed the gold much easier and, more importantly, much faster. He hired a mining engineer named S.E. Montgomery to go with him and help him blast out the shaft. Although Doc claimed the mountain was rotten, and the two men argued viciously about the charge to used, Montgomery won the argument. The choice was eight sticks of dynamite.

The blast was disastrous. Instead of widening the passage as Doc wanted, it caused a cave-in, collapsing the fragile shaft and effectively shutting Doc out of his own mine. Doc tried several times to regain entry into his mine, but the shaft was sealed with tons of debris. All attempts failed, leaving him embittered and angry. He took to taking his frustrations out on his wife, and it was not long before Babe and Doc divorced. Now, instead of having thousands of gold bars to draw from, he only had those few hundred that he had brought to the surface. He became very protective of those gold bars. Two years after his divorce from Babe, he married Violet Lena Boles, which would further complicate ownership of the treasure rights in the years to come.

When Doc became desperate for cash, he took into his confidence a man named Joseph Andregg. The two of them transported gold bars, coins, jewels, and artifacts into Arizona, selling them on the black market. For nine years, Doc attempted illegally to sell his gold, but it was difficult finding buyers. He was afraid of getting caught and ending up in prison. His paranoia increased daily.

In 1949, Doc met a miner named Charley Ryan from Alice, Texas. He became convinced that Ryan could reopen the shaft, and he arranged to exchange some of the gold bars for $25,000 to fund the venture. Meanwhile, Babe Noss had filed a counter-claim on the entire area. Denied entry by the courts until legalities could determine the legal owner of the mine, Doc feared Ryan would back out of the deal. Sensing a double-cross and that Ryan would abscond with fifty-one bars of re-hidden gold, Doc asked an acquaintance, Tony Jolly, to help him rebury the gold in a new hiding place. The trip made a believer out of Jolly.

"We got in the pickup, and we went out across the desert a long ways," said Jolly, "and we started digging. We dug twenty bars of gold out of the ground right there. I said, ‘Doc, what’s going on?’ and he said, ‘Well, there’s a fella coming tomorrow who’s gonna fly in here, and he’s supposed to take this gold and sell it, and he’s supposed to split with me. I got word that he’s gonna sell it and keep right on going with the money.’ We reburied those bars of gold. There turned out to be ninety more. I handled, and I saw one hundred and ten bars of gold."

The next day Doc and Ryan got into an argument, and Ryan pulled a gun on Doc. Ryan insisted that they discuss the problem of what happened to the gold that Doc had re-hidden, hinting that if Doc did not reveal its new hiding place, Doc would not live to enjoy the gold. A fight ensued. As Doc Noss headed toward his car, Ryan, fearing Doc was getting a gun, shot in Doc’s direction. The bullet struck Doc in the head, killing him instantly. The date was 5 March 1949. Just twelve years after discovering the treasure, Doc Noss died kneeling in the dust with only $2.16 in his pocket. Ryan was charged with murder, but was later acquitted.

As the years passed, Babe Noss held onto her claim at Victorio Peak, occasionally hiring men to help her clear the shaft. Things were plodding along until 1955, when White Sands Missile Range unexpectedly expanded their operations to encompass the Hembrillo Basin. The military locked Babe out. Although Babe corresponded regularly with the military requesting permission to enter the range and work her claim, she was always denied. The military was afraid that allowing her permission would set a precedent that would allow others to petition and make similar claims. It would hinder the Army’s mission, which was missile testing. From that moment onward, every attempt of Babe’s to clear the rubble from the plugged shaft met with a military escort out of the area.

The real problem with the military claim on the land stemmed from a statement made by state officials in New Mexico. On 14 November 1951, Public Land Order No. 703 was issued, which withdrew all the White Sands Proving Ground (later to be called the White Sands Missile Range) from prospecting, entry, location, and purchase under the mining laws and reserved their use for the military. But the state officials claimed that they leased only the surface of the land to the military. The underground wealth, in whatever form it took, still belonged to the state, or to the holders of the various types of licenses. If there was treasure on the land, it did not belong to the Army, but it might not have belonged to Doc Noss, either. A search of mining records in December 1950 failed to turn up any existing mining claims, which Doc claimed he had filed. Further, Roy Henderson owned the land where Victorio Peak is located, and he had leased it to the Army. Before him, the Gilmore family had lived there. In other words, much of the disputed land belonged not to the Noss family, but to someone else.

Babe Noss then contacted the two senators from New Mexico, hoping to enlist their help in mining her claim. In December 1952, Senator Dennis Chavez wrote to Brigadier General G. G. Eddy about the problem on the White Sands Proving Grounds. Senator Clinton P. Anderson also wrote to General Eddy, but the general ruled that no further operations would be allowed on the peak because the paperwork was already being prepared to transfer all mineral rights to the government. The dispute was finally worked out in federal court which settled on a compromise of sorts. The Army would continue to use the surface of the land, but no one would be allowed on the Proving Grounds without the Army’s consent. In effect, no one could mine the treasure, and that included the Army and Babe Noss, but that did not deter Babe. She refused to leave, claiming that all she wanted, according to all the letters and documents she sent, was to recover what her late husband had discovered.

By 1958, few people believed in Babe’s claim of hidden gold. Doc was dead, and with his death went the location of all the buried bars of bullion he had removed from the peak before sealing himself out of the mountain. With the passage of years, few people could claim to have seen any of the treasure. Even though the military always refused any of Babe’s efforts to work her claim, it apparently did not refuse other military personnel from exploring portions of the White Sands. The fat hit the fire when two airmen from nearby Holloman Air Force Base said they had penetrated the gold cavern from another natural opening in the side of Victorio Peak.

The soldiers, Airman First Class Thomas Berlett and Captain Leonard V. Fiege, said they had penetrated a fissure which led to a small cavern filled with approximately one hundred gold bars weighing between forty and eighty pounds each. The bars were shaped like house bricks. Neither man was familiar with laws governing the discovery of treasure on a military reservations, nor were they aware that the Whites Sands command did not hold the mineral rights to anything found on the Range. Fiege told several people that he had caved in the roof and walls to make it look as if the tunnel came to a dead end, and then both men covered the entrance with rocks and dirt to disguise the location. Fiege then went to the Judge Advocate’s Office at Holloman Air Force Base and conferred with Colonel Sigmund I. Gasiewicz.

There was now two separate military commands involved. Gasiewicz called the Land Office in Santa Fe and spoke to a Land Office attorney named Oscar Jordan, saying that an officer assigned to the command at Holloman Air Force Base had found a gold bar on White Sands Proving Grounds, an Army post. Jordan suggested the gold bar be sent to the Department of the Treasury or to the Secret Service, since Jordan was under the impression that Fiege had carried a gold bar to the JAG office at Holloman. Both Fiege and Gasiewicz denied that this happened, but they did form a corporation to protect what Fiege had found. They planned to contact the various governmental agencies to make sure they violated no laws, and they planned to make a formal application to enter White Sands for a search and retrieval of the gold. Although the military issued an edict forbidding them to go back and remove any gold, gold fever still struck. This time the gold seekers were the U. S. Army.

In the summer of 1961, Captain Fiege, Captain Orby Swanner, Major Kelly, and Colonel Gorman were instructed by Major General John Shinkle of White Sands to work the Noss claim on advice from the director of the Mint, who had been bothered by many requests for additional information on the treasure. General Shinkle did not want anyone on the installation not authorized to be there, but he was interested in solving the mystery once and for all. However, he was unwilling to set a precedent that would haunt all of them in the future, so he requested the permission from the Department of the Army to allow a search. On 5 August, Fiege and his party returned to Victorio Peak, accompanied by the commander of the Missile Range, a secret service agent, and fourteen military police. Try as he would, Captain Fiege was unable to penetrate the opening he had used just three years earlier. General Shinkle finally had enough of it and ordered everyone out. Fiege took a lie detector test, and the results of that test prompted General Shinkle to allow Fiege back on the missile range. This time, the military to began a full-scale mining operation at the Peak.

In October of that year, fueled by increasing suspicions that the military was working her claim, Babe Noss hired four men to surreptitiously enter the range. These men were caught trespassing, and after being escorted from the area, they reported to Babe that they observed several men in Army fatigues on the peak. In an affidavit dated 28 October 1961, one of the men, Judge H.L. Moreland of Loveland, Texas, claimed they saw a military jeep, a weapons carrier, a number of poles about the width of telephone poles, and other timbers which were cut and notched.

In his affidavit, Judge Moreland testified that his group talked to Captain Orby Swanner, who ordered them to leave the missile range. As soon as he could, Moreland reported the Army activity on Victorio Peak to Babe Noss. She told Oscar Jordan with the New Mexico State Land Office, and Jordan contacted the Judge Advocate’s Office at White Sands Missile Range. In December 1961, General Shinkle shut down the operation and excluded all from the range who were not engaged in missile research activities

Thirty days later, under cover of darkness, Moreland and his friends returned to the Peak. It was totally deserted. Moreland saw the remains of extensive excavations, apparently carried out by the government. There were roads and scaffolds and tunnels, but as for Babe Noss’ gold treasure, there was no sign of it.

The Gaddis Mining Company of Denver, Colorado, under a $100,000 contract to the Denver Mint, and working with the Museum of New Mexico in Santa Fe, obtained permission from the military to dig the site in 1963. Since it was a state sponsored research trip, designed to uncover artifacts of archaeological significance, the Army readily agreed. For three months, beginning on 20 June 1963, using a variety of techniques, they mapped the peak, searching for large void area that would indicate caverns. They removed tons of earth, dug their own tunnel into the side of the peak, but no entrance to any treasure cache occurred. They also dug a number of small test holes ranging in depth from 18 to 175 feet. When they ceased operations, they were a quarter of a million dollars poorer for their searching which failed to turn up anything.

It was during this same period that the Department of the Army asked Babe Noss to sign a consent document allowing the Army to search. What it said was that she waived all rights to sue the Army or the government "for alleged unlawful taking and withholding of her personal property." Under advise from her attorney, she was advised not to sign, but she had already signed the document when her attorney learned of it. What he wanted to know was why the Army would insist on such a waiver? Was it an indirect admission that there had been unauthorized intrusion into the cavern by military personnel?

It turns out that there are two theories to this document. First, only Doc Noss had ever been inside the peak, and it is only his word that gold bars were stacked there. Although Leonard Fiege had been inside a cavern, he had been feeling sick the day he was there, and all he saw were bricks covered in dust. They may or may not have been gold bars. There are some who think that Doc salted the cave in an attempt to defraud others. So, for the Army to have Babe sign such a waiver document, might not they be guarding against a real possibility that once the cavern was opened, nothing would be found in it? If Babe then believed that the Army or the government had beaten her into the cave and "stolen" the treasure that belonged to her, she would not be able to file suit. It would make no difference if the gold had been there or not, or even if the treasure cave was a myth or not. What mattered was that the Army would be protected from lawsuits.

In 1972, F. Lee Bailey, a nationally known attorney, became involved. He claimed to represent fifty unidentified clients "who knew the location of the cave with one hundred tons of gold stacked within." These claimants had retained Bailey to help them find a legal means to work the claim on the federal reservation. Bailey was skeptical, but was provided with one of the bars for analysis. He sent it to the Treasury for testing. It was sixty percent gold and forty percent copper. The problem is that fourteen-karat gold is about fifty-eight percent gold and forty-two percent copper. It was noted that old gold ingots were often far from pure. No real conclusion could be drawn from the tests. Also, the Senate Watergate hearings were in progress, and the matter was not pursued through Federal channels. Again, Babe Noss was not one of the claimants.

Meanwhile, there were now all sorts of claimants in the issue. Along with Babe Noss, there was the group formed around Fiege, Violet Noss Yancy, something called the Shriver group, the Bailey claimants, and Expeditions Unlimited (a Florida based treasure hunting group). The Army, suffering a guilty conscience perhaps, finally allowed Expeditions Unlimited, representing all of the groups, including Babe Noss and Airman Thomas Berlett, to excavate the peak in 1977. Berlett reported that ‘if the mountain has not been penetrated and no materials removed from the mountain, this will be the biggest thing that this country has ever seen.’ However, the Army placed a two week time limit on the group, and they had hardly started before they had to quit. What was most valuable, from the Army’s point of view, was that those claiming something was hidden in Victorio Peak had had their chance to search. They had found nothing. The Army then shut down all operations and said no additional searches would be allowed.

It was not the end of Babe’s quest for her mine. Her story spread like tentacles across the land, becoming profiled in several magazines and newspaper articles. Although Babe died in 1979, he grandson, Terry Delonas, fully intended to continue the family tradition. He formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership. By 1989, the story of the Noss family treasure claim had reached millions of Americans. Incredibly, another piece of the Victorio Peak puzzle then surfaced.

It came from a retired couple living in Baytown near Houston, Texas. Captain Swanner was stationed at White Sands Missile Range in the early 1960’s, and he apparently told member of his family about the Victorio Peak mystery. He said that he had gone to inspect and confirm that the treasure as reported by Airman Berlett and Captain Fiege did exist. He was Chief of Security at the time. When he determined the accuracy of the two men’s reports, he put the entire area off-limits until an official investigation could be conducted. His superiors notified the Pentagon.

Supposedly, the military was able to penetrate at least one of the secret caves and inventory the contents, although the gold bars were supposedly removed to Fort Knox. The Pentagon confirmed that Captain Swanner had served as an officer assigned to security at White Sands Missile Range in 1961. However, Gordon Hobbs, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army, responded to the allegations reported of Captain Swanner by his relatives by saying that he really did not know anything. He had never seen any such claim in any of the records he had examined, and he had heard nothing of any such claim in the inquiries he had conducted. It did not mean it had never happened, it just meant that Gordon Hobbs could find no record of it.

For Gordon Hobbs to be telling the truth, and there is no reason for him to lie, the official records may have been altered or destroyed or there was never anything in the peak in the first place. On the other hand, what was all the covert military operation on the peak that Judge Moreland and his friends witnessed in 1961? Furthermore, the Army certainly knew of the Noss claim. Babe Noss had been in contact with them for years to gain access to it. If it could ever be proved that the Army stole Babe’s treasure, would not the Army then be liable for restitution? Under that assumption, would not it be better for the Army to conveniently lose, misplace, or destroy any records that might have existed to support that accusation?

The Army’s official position on the whereabouts of the gold is still a cautious one. According to Jim Eckles, civilian public affairs officer at White Sands Missile Range, the burden of proof rests with the accusers. There is just no way of satisfying everyone involved in this mystery.

Some researchers believe the Army really did retrieve much of the gold and then perpetrated a cover-up. They point out that the army spent hundreds of thousands of dollars digging and excavating Victorio Peak. They also point out that the Army built roads and even placed a locked steel door over the original shaft discovered by Doc Noss. Why...if not to conceal?

Was Captain Orby Swanner telling the truth? Did the Army removed the gold from Victorio Peak? Is there any physical evidence that Captain Swanner, or anyone for that matter, was ever, in fact, inside Victorio Peak in 1961? There are some who claim that Swanner left evidence of his presence in the cave, and that during the 1977 excavation, military debris---battery packs and such---was found. There is also the claim that they photographed a name and a date and an Army serial number on the wall of one of the tunnels. The name was Capt. Orby Swanner. The date was 7 OCT 1961.

Understandably, members of the Noss family and their friends believe that the military may have exploited Babe’s claim and that the treasure is now gone. They think soldiers may have moved it out by October 1961. But it is also entirely possible that the treasure still remains. The codices mentioned a total of seven entrances into the peak---presumably doorways to seven different treasure locations. Doc Noss’ was the summit; Captain Fiege’s was along one side. Suppose there are others?

Terry Delonas just doesn't know. "We're not accusing the military of stealing the gold, but I do feel that the Department of the Army in the 1960’s treated my grandmother unfairly. They really tried to make a fool out of her, and all the time she was telling the truth. They had sent my grandmother on a wild goose chase for decades. If that is the fact, I think a great injustice has been done. However, we’ve worked very hard over the years to establish a working relationship with the military, and we're certainly not going to jeopardize that by accusing them of theft."

It is doubtful anyone will know the truth about Victorio Peak until it is thoroughly excavated. There is no doubt a treasure existed; it has been photographed, affidavits are on file from those who have seen it, and Babe Noss had relics from it. Researchers also believe that the mine of Father La Rue was the hiding place of Chief Victorio’s plunder...and Doc Noss’ discovery.

Babe Noss died in 1979 and since then, her heirs have continued to push the Army for permission to excavate the peak. A special act of Congress, House Bill 2461 passed in 1989, has unlocked the Hembrillo Basin for Terry Delonas and the other heirs of Babe Noss to investigate, but even though the Partnership has been allowed back on the range, they have still found nothing as of 1995. The search is on-going.

Is the treasure still there? No one knows for sure. With all the blasting and digging that has occurred on the peak over the past sixty years, it may be impossible to economically excavate. But if it does still exist, the entire treasure today is estimated to be worth more than $1.7 billion dollars.

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