Victorio Peak lies within the San Andres Mountains in south-central New Mexico’s Hembrillo Basin, approximately seventy miles north of Las Cruces. In 1880, it was the site of a battle between the Apache Indians and the United States Army Ninth Cavalry “Buffalo Soldiers.”

In 1937, Victorio Peak attained a different kind of notoriety when a hoard of gold and other valuables was purportedly discovered in the 5,500-foot mountain’s network of tunnels. Several expeditions– some official, others informal, all unsuccessful– have been conducted for the supposed stashed cache that would, by most estimates and if accurately described, be worth upwards of $4.5 billion today, though some accounts place it as high as $28 billion.

When the United States Army’s White Sands Missile Range assumed jurisdiction over Victorio Peak, many believe the riches were secretly seized by the government under the guise of national security. Others contend the claims of a treasure trove are a tall tale told by a phony physician.

Shortly after marrying in October 1933, Milton and Ova Noss opened a foot clinic fifty-five miles northwest of Victorio Peak in Hot Springs, now known as Truth or Consequences. Ova, ten years her groom’s senior, had four children from her first marriage.

Milton bestowed his bride the nickname of “Babe;” he was soon dubbed “Doc,” a dubious moniker as the former travelling medicine showman was not formally educated in any medical field, nor was he legally licensed to practice podiatry. He skirted around the issue by not performing any actual surgeries.

The phony foot doctor abandoned his podiatry practice upon setting foot in a Victorio Peak cavern four years later.

Ova “Babe” And Milton “Doc” Noss

While deer hunting in the Chihuahuan Desert on November 7, 1937, Doc Noss noticed an old ladder he claimed led into a maze of tunnels within a labyrinth of large limestone caverns atop Victorio Peak. Inside one cave sat an old crate, carved with the words “Sealed Silver” in Old English, filled with a large number of gold, silver, bronze, and platinum coins.

In ensuing expeditions deeper into surrounding caverns, Noss told of entering an apparent burial chamber containing seventy-nine human skeletons, some of which were mummified. In a deeper adjacent cavern, he told of finding a plethora of treasures: three large oval-shaped chests containing conquistador-era Spanish armor and artifacts, jewels, gold ore, silver, precious stones, along with several knives, swords, saint statues, and other church relics. The chests bore the name Wells Fargo and also contained papers and letters appearing to have been from the nineteenth-century.

Noss removed some of these items from the cave; he said they paled in comparison to what sat in a contiguous chamber.

Some Of The Claimed Items From The Cave

Noss said he came upon upwards of 16,000 gold bars, most of which were too heavy to carry out. He had, however, removed twenty-three of the smaller bars, weighing between thirty-five and fifty pounds. They were generally crudely formed, indicating the use of a primitive smelting processes.

Some Of The Small Bars

In the spring of 1938, Doc and Babe Noss established mining rights to Victorio Peak with the creation of the Cheyenne Mining Company, and they secured legal rights to the purported valuables by obtaining a lease to the mountain and surrounding land. They also filed a treasure trove claim with the state of New Mexico that was based on the old English law declaring that a found treasure belongs to the discoverer if the original owner cannot be determined or is deceased.

The Nosses enlisted aid from multiple acquaintances in the form of labor and equipment in return for a promised share of any found riches. Over the following year, the group contend they removed upwards of two-hundred to three-hundred-fifty of the larger gold bars from the cave. Some estimated they weighed between sixty-five to seventy pounds; others thought they were around thirty-five to forty pounds.

The Nosses Stake Their Legal Claims

As word of his purported discovery had spread, Doc Noss reportedly scattered the bars across the desert and beyond, including outside of New Mexico. The ingots were hidden partly because of fearing theft, but also because Executive Order 6102, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in April 1933, prohibited American citizens from owning or selling most form of gold coins or bullion. Any possessed or subsequently found gold had to be surrendered to the government for compensation.

Plenty of people, however, still sought gold. With his money dwindling, Noss is said to have secretly sold some of the coins, jewels, and small gold bars and swapped others for supplies. Santa Fe electrician Joseph Andregg said he helped him sell many of the artifacts in Arizona after they had been carved into small nuggets to avoid attracting attention.

New Mexico Governor John Miles told Doc that to receive payment for the gold he had to prove he had found it, that it was not pilfered, and that it could be safely viewed by State, Federal, and Treasury Department oficials.

Doc then, in the fall of 1939, hired mining engineer S. E. Montgomery to dispose of a large boulder hanging in Victorio Peak’s lower shaft. It was hoped the detonation would open a larger passageway inside, but it instead caused a cave-in collapsing the pit and closing off access.

Doc Is Locked Out Of The Cave

The Nosses were left with only the remaining relics that had not yet been sold or traded and the roughly few hundred buried gold bars. They took several of the bars to the Denver Mint. At the time, $35 per troy ounce was paid, but they said the gold was instead confiscated; the Mint denied doing so.

A 1990s investigation by Denver’s KWGN-TV Channel 2 News found the city’s National Archives contianed all the ledger receipts for all gold taken in by the Mint . .  . except for the fall of 1939.

A Beef With The Mint

In mid-1945, Doc Noss disappeared. Babe had the mining claim to Victorio Peak renewed in her name alone.

When Doc resurfaced in early 1947, he dropped a bomb on Babe, saying he was now married to another woman, Violet (née) Boles. Babe, however, had never been given any divorce papers.

Violet Boles

Doc had gone east hoping to accumulate more money to further search Victorio Peak. In addition to finding a new mate, he also found a new business partner.

Charley Ryan of Alice, Texas, owned the Ryan Tool Company and a mine near Hatch, New Mexico, approximately forty miles southwest of the mountain. The wealthy oilman and miner invested approximately $28,000 in the Victorio Peak venture and said he was promised a share of any potential unearthed treasures. In addition to paying for equipment, his money was used to build an airstrip runway near the site, as Noss envisioned flying gold across and out of the country.

In 1948, Ryan agreed to purchase fifty-one of Noss’s gold bars for $25,000. Shortly before the sale was to be completed, Noss told of overhearing Ryan saying he was going to double-cross him. In response, Noss and an associate, Tony Jolley, dug up and reburied, by Jolley’s count, one-hundred-ten of the bars on the evening of March 4, 1949. Ryan received word and accused Noss of fraud, claiming he had told him they were mining for lead, not gold.

Charley Ryan

An argument between the men the following day culminated with Noss being shot to death outside Ryan’s rented home in Hatch. Noss’s head had landed on Ryan’s car’s front bumper.

The man who had reputedly found a treasure worth millions of dollars had $2.16 in his pocket when he was killed.

Dead Doc 

Though he had ordered Doc Noss into his home at gunpoint, Charley Ryan claimed self-defense, saying Noss had threatened the lives of him and his family if he did not repay a $350 loan, and that their argument had turned physical with Noss knocking him down, breaking a window in the process. Ryan’s wife and four of his acquaintances were in his home at the time and confirmed the account.

Noss, Ryan further testified, then ran toward his truck while yelling he was going to kill him. Knowing Noss kept a pistol in his vehicle, Ryan said he grabbed his gun and fired a warning shot into the ground, ordering Noss to stop. He instead continued to his truck and Ryan again fired, this time striking and killing him.

Charley Ryan’s account proved convincing.    

Doc Noss’s family believed the jury members were prejudiced against him because of his part-Indian background, but his checkered past also no doubt aided Ryan’s arguments.

Noss had served two prison stints in New Mexico and Texas during the 1930s for assault and alcohol-related offenses. He had also reportedly sold fake gold bricks to several people in New Mexico and other states. One bar obtained by the Secret Service was composed primarily of brass and copper “with possible flakes of gold.”

In addition, upwards of twenty-four people testified of additional instances of Noss displaying a heated temper.

Doc Had A Dubious Past

Many also felt that both Judge William Scoggin and Ben Newell, Charley Ryan’s defense attorney, should have recused themselves from the trial because the 3% interest each man held in the Cheyenne Mining Company represented a conflict of interest.

                                                                           

                       William Scoggin                                       Ben Newell

Following her former husband’s death, Babe Noss continued renewing the mining claim to Victorio Peak in her name. She and her sons, Harold and Marvin Beckwith, daughters Lena Guthrie and Dorothy Delonas, along with six others, signed sworn affidavits attesting to removing multiple gold bars from Victorio Peak. They continued efforts to reopen the passageway to the alleged treasure, until being compelled to cease doing so.

Babe’s Family

During World War II, the United States Army converted New Mexico’s largely uninhabited and desolate White Sands Proving Ground to a bombing range. The first atomic bomb was tested at the 3,200-square-mile section of land in July 1945.

In 1955, the Army expanded its range by taking formal possession of the area including and surrounding Victorio Peak. A legal issue arose because the land was not owned by the State of New Mexico, but by a man named Roy Henderson, who had leased it to the Army. A federal court, however, allowed the seizure, and prospecting rights became exclusive for military use only.

Three years later, the area was renamed White Sands Missile Range.

Babe Noss was assured she and her team could resume their excavation efforts as soon as they were not deemed a hindrance to national security, but no indication was provided of when such a time was forthcoming.

Babe Is Denied Access To Victorio Peak

In 1958, two off-duty Air Force servicemen (some sources say four men) reported finding items in Victorio Peak similar those described by Doc Noss seventeen years earlier, and to have stumbled upon the riches in a similar manner while professing to have been deer hunting.

Captain Leonard Fiege and Airman First Class Tom Bertlett were stationed at Holloman Air Force Base, sixty-five miles to the east. As military personnel, they were allowed on the White Sands Missile Range.

Inside the cave, the men said they came upon upwards of several hundred or perhaps thousands of gold metal bars weighing between forty and eighty pounds and stacked in two pyramid shapes roughly six feet high, three feet wide, and eight feet long, and a third pyramidal stack, about three feet high. They claimed they did not remove any of the bullion, and to have dynamited shut (unlike Doc Noss, intentionally) four entrances to the mountain after being denied permission to further explore the area.

Both airmen signed affidavits to what they had observed and each passed polygraph tests.

                                     

Former Air Force Servicemen

Leonard Fiege And Thomas Berlett

1977 And 1989 Photos

A year later, Secretary of the Army Wilbur Brucker authorized a military search and excavation of Victorio Peak. Injunctions filed by Babe Noss as well as the state of New Mexico delayed the digging until October 1961.

Nothing of significance was reported found, but the extensive drilling and unusual crisscrossing roads observed on the peak during the search fueled rumors of the Army having located and confiscated the treasure.

1960s Aerial Image of Victorio Peak

 During The Army’s Search

In December, four men signed affidavits attesting to having viewed suspicious activity at Victorio Peak on October 28, 1961.

Before they were ordered to vacate the area by Captain Orby Swanner, Jr., the signees stated they had witnessed several men in Army fatigues, as well as a military jeep, a weapons carrier, several rods appearing the width of telephone poles, and cut and notched timbers on the mountain. They reported the activity to Babe Noss.

Believing the Army did not have legal access to the mine because all such claims were still in her name, Babe contacted Oscar Jordan, a lawyer with the New Mexico State Land Office. He agreed, feeling the Army had access only to the land’s surface, and that anything underground still belonged to the state of New Mexico.

Jordan spoke with an Army Colonel at White Sands who essentially told him to stop asking questions. The following day, he was contacted by the Commander at White Sands, Major General John Shinkle. He confirmed there had been digging on the peak, but that it had ended. Shortly thereafter, he barred anyone not directly engaged in missile research from entering the base.

An Affidavit Attesting To The Activity At Victorio Peak

Orby Swanner’s sister Juanita Erwin and her husband Gene said he told them he had been ordered to remove the Victorio Peak Treasure during a top secret operation in October 1961.

The Erwins said Swanner had told them that a Defense Department Task Force consisting of him and three Pentagon employees had been sent to Victorio Peak to inventory and photograph the contents, which were then removed by the Army via truck and helicopter. Swanner believed the cargo, the most valuable of which was in gold bars, was taken by the Secret Service and another government agency to the United States Bullion Depository, AKA Fort Knox, the renowned Army Installation in Kentucky holding large amounts of America’s gold reserves.

Even after retiring from the Army two years later, Swanner had asked his sister and brother-in-law to keep mum, saying his life could be in peril if they revealed what he had told them. They only made his claims public in 1989, three years after his death at age sixty. Russell Dunn, who had worked with Swanner while in the Army, said he had conveyed the same account to him.

The Pentagon confirmed that Captain Orby Swanner was assigned to security at the White Sands Missile Range in 1961, but spokesman Gordon Hobbs said they have no records of anything being removed from the site or of any “top secret” operation conducted there.

Army Captain Orby Swanner

Tony Jolley, the man who helped Doc Noss scatter and bury many of the gold bars, later signed an affidavit that he later returned to the Chihuahuan Desert in 1961 and reburied many of the bars in different locations.

Tony Jolley

In July 1963, Babe Noss was granted a contract with the Denver Mint and the New Mexico Museum for a sixty-day excavation of Victorio Peak. She hired the Gaddis Mining Company of Denver which burrowed a two-foot tunnel into the summit, but they found nothing.

That same year, the state of New Mexico denied the Army’s request for exclusive rights, including mineral rights, to Victorio Peak. The Army obtained an extension on the lease to Victorio Peak land, however, until 1970.

Babe’s petitions to the Department of the Army and the Pentagon to resume attempts to open Victorio Peak were repeatedly denied.

Babe Strikes Out

The purported Victorio Peak Treasure was unexpectedly mentioned during the Watergate hearings in June 1973, when White House Counsel John Dean testified that upwards of fifty anonymous people represented by prominent Boston attorney F. Lee Bailey had sought permission to excavate the mountain and to sell any gold potentially found. The group was comprised primarily of many current and former military personnel.

The Army, because of the ensuing publicity, granted a group of private claimants a ten-day expedition of Victorio Peak in March 1977, a little over two years after President Gerald Ford’s lifting of the ban on private ownership of gold. Led by Norman Scott, a professional treasure hunter and President of the Florida-based Expeditions Unlimited Inc., the expedition was dubbed “Operation Goldfinder,” a play on the James Bond movie Goldfinger.

The parties included Babe Noss, Leonard Fiege, F. Lee Bailey’s clients (dubbed the “filthy fifty,”) representatives of the Apache Nation, some of the alleged heirs of outlaw Jesse James, and, much to Babe’s chagrin, the second Mrs. Noss, the now remarried Violet Yancy.

Many of the claims were quickly proven wild goose chases. Babe Noss’s was the only one to show any promise when, on day ten, echoes of at least three-hundred to four-hundred feet deep detected in ground radar tests suggested there was a large cavern near where Doc Noss had drawn a map of where he said the treasure was located.

The Army granted Scott’s request for three more days to search Victorio Peak, but no treasure trove was found. Operation Goldfinder was terminated on April 1.

Corroboration of Captain Orby Swanner’s having been inside the cave, however, was found in the form of an inscription on a wall reading “Captain Orby Swanner 7 October 1961.” Also included was Swanner’s military serial number, battery packs, and military debris.

Captain Swanner’s Inscription In The Cave

Following Babe Noss’s death in 1979 at age eighty-five, the Ova Noss Family Partnership was established to fund additional searches of Victorio Peak. It was headed by Babe’s grandson Terry Delonas and included her children, other grandchildren, and investors.

Babe Dies

Two years later, Terry says retired General William Baumer, Jr. confirmed Orby Swanner’s account of the Army removing forty-two tons of gold from Victorio Peak in 1961, but he added that the media deluge had forced them to leave about half of the treasure behind.

Army General William Baumer, Jr.

After a decade of being stonewalled, the Ova Noss Family Partnership was granted a permit authorizing another search of Victorio Peak shortly after the case was profiled on Unsolved Mysteries. Although issued by Congress through a rider attached to the Defense Authorization Act of 1990, the Army negotiated the specific license, which included strict requirements for environmental costs and documentation, and they were given the authority to revoke it if terms were not met.

The excavation commenced in 1992 and encompassed updated technology, including a seismograph, and involved those associated with the partnership along with construction, engineering, and mining experts.

The group had several of Doc Noss’s hand-drawn maps, but most appeared to be purposefully cryptic and were of little value. One, however, appeared to show the treasure’s location.

Does X Mark The Spot?

Deep in the cavern, diggers found a board with a “T” and star symbol carved on it. They believe it had been imprinted by Doc Noss because he often used the aliases Tom Starr or T. Starr, as he had given the erroneous impression of being related to the noted nineteenth century outlaw Belle Starr.

A Clue Left By Doc Noss? 

The excavators also found multiple items, including buckets, flashlights, lamps, and tools too modern to be from Doc’s era. These findings suggested another group, such as the Army, had already been inside the cave.

Other Items Found

In March 1996, the excavators found several bone fragments approximately eight-hundred feet underground. Because few animals dwell that deeply, they believed the shards were from the skeletons Doc Noss had said he had found in 1937.

The group believed they were approximately only twenty feet from the treasure and issued a press release stating they believed they could have it unearthed in about one week. Two days later, the Army revoked their permit and confiscated their equipment, citing over $700,000 in unpaid bills.

The Ova Noss Family Partnership disputed the claims, charging their money had been illicitly moved across accounts to make it falsely appear they were in gross appears.

The bones found inside the cave had disappeared before being analyzed by archaeologists.

The Ova Noss Family Partnership contends their search efforts were terminated because the Army realized continued digging would soon confirm their having removed much of the gold, and to deprive those involved with the organization of any claim to the remaining treasure.

The Army and Terry Delonas, as head of the Ova Noss Family Partnership, filed lawsuits against each other over the declared unpaid fees. An agreement was reached in 2000, with the Army forgiving the alleged debt in exchange for Delonas agreeing not to pursue any further permission to access Victorio Peak.

Terry Delonas

In the 2023 documentary Golds, Lies and Videotape Terry Delonas said that his office was burglarized and that everything relating to Victorio Peak was taken, and Jack Staley, author of The Gold House trilogy, says evidence suggest that Orby Swanner was poisoned to death and that Leonard Fiege, who died in 1979, may have been murdered as well.

The documentary also showed, in earlier footage, a man named B. A. Davis contending his Army identification was taken and his service records were erased after he had talked about the government’s excavation at Victorio Peak. Davis also said he was denied his GI Rights because the Army said he had not served with them.

To many, these actions fuel suspicion of the Army having gone to extreme lengths to keep whatever was or still is in Victorio Peak hidden.

Victorio’s Secret

The Ova Noss Family Partnership’s 1992-96 excavation was the last major authorized undertaking for the reputed Victorio Peak treasure. If the La Casa del Cueva de Oro (Spanish for “House of the Golden Cave”) is real, several theories are proffered to its origins.

A Treasure Trove Or A Tall Tale?

One suggestion holds the treasure is that of Spanish conquistador Juan de Onate, who founded New Mexico as a colony in 1598 and served as its first colonial governor. Seeking out the Seven Cities of Gold, he reportedly accumulated a horde of gold, silver, and jewels before being ordered back to Mexico City in 1607.

Juan de Onate

Perhaps the most prevalent theory is that the legendary loot belonged to Felipe LaRue, a perhaps only legendary eighteenth-century Catholic missionary.

It is said that while the French Jesuit priest was stationed at a mission in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1797, an aging Spanish solider told him of the nearby treasure. LaRue and a group of mission laborers are said to have abandoned their post and found the gold, upon which they used indigenous people and fellow monks to mine until learning of a pursuing Mexican army. The priest is then said to have moved the gold to Victorio Peak, roughly three-hundred miles north, and to have sealed the locale with a landslide. He was reportedly tortured and executed for not divulging the treasure’s location.

The “Lost Padre Mine” theory is popular because Doc Noss is reported to have retrieved a document dated to 1797, supposedly being a translation of a text (as the term originally applied) from Pope Pius III, who reigned for only twenty-six days in 1503.Noss is believed to have put the paper in a Wells Fargo chest which he buried in the desert.

No concrete historical evidence, however, proves the existence of Father Felipe LaRue.

A Rendering Of The Supposed Father Felipe LaRue

Others believe the Victorio Peak Treasure is that of Maximilian I, the Austrian Archduke puppet Emperor of Mexico from 1864 until his execution in 1867. He was rumored to have transferred much of his wealth to the United States after learning of a plot to kill him.

Doc Noss had removed a ring and a crown weighing seven pounds and containing two-hundred-forty-three diamonds and one large ruby. He had said the items were a trunk in a cave labeled “Carlota,” the name of Maximilian’s Belgian-Princess wife, and he believed an oval-topped box he had found was also stamped with the name.

                                           

Emperor Maximilian I                         Carlota’s Crown And Ring?                  And Princess Carlota 

The Apache Indians raided Wells Fargo stagecoaches carrying mined gold throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century. Because Babe Noss had said Doc had brought out five types of distinct bars from Victorio Peak, some believe the loot was acquired by the tribe during multiple raids spanning the time period.

   

An Apache Attack 

Some have suggested the treasure is that of Apache Indian Chief Victorio as he frequently hid in the mountain during the 1879-80 “Victorio’s War” against the United States and Mexico, during which he amassed vast amounts of gold through his attacks. He was also known to have killed many of his prisoners at the basin named for him, which could explain the skeletons Doc Noss had told of finding.

Victorio Peak is named for Chief Victorio, but for many years it was listed on maps as “Victoria” Peak, as cartographers and historians mistakenly believed it to be named for Britain’s Queen Victoria. The error was only rectified in 1959, when Albuquerque Tribune reporter Howard Bryan and a new generation of historians and researchers discovered the correct namesake.

Apache Chief Victorio

Speculation also abounds that Milton “Doc” Noss may not have been first person to find the Victorio Peak Treasure, nor was he the first to have been killed over the cache.

In 1896, attorney and lawman Albert Jennings Fountain and his eight-year-old-son Henry disappeared in the White Sands area. They are believed to have been murdered as blood was found inside their buckboard wagon, but their bodies were never found.

Local lore posits that Fountain and his son met their demise after stumbling upon the Victorio Gold.

Albert Jennings Fountain

SOURCES:

• Alamogordo Daily News
• Albuquerque Journal
• Chicago Tribune
• Deseret News
• El Paso Times
• Freedom Magazine
• Gold, Lies, & Videotape (Discovery Channel Docuseries)
• Las Cruces Sun-News
• Legends of America
• Los Angeles Times
• New Mexico Magazine
• Santa Fe New Mexican
• Unsolved Mysteries