A
mountain -- well, honestly, it's a small 400-foot-tall
hill -- in the middle of the
Hembrillo Basin in southern
New Mexico. Named after the famous
Apache chief.
The mountain is best known for the
legend of the
lost Victorio Peak
gold. The stories got started back in the
1920s, when
gold bars started to turn up here and there. In 1937, a
convict-turned-
podiatrist named
Milton "Doc" Noss went hunting
deer one day and found a
shaft in the side of Victorio Peak. Noss later claimed that the shaft was "big enough for a
freight train."
Once Noss entered the shaft, he discovered a number of small
caverns. Exploring with only a
flashlight, he first came upon the
grisly discovery of 27 human
skeletons and, just not far beyond, obscene amounts of
treasure, including
jewels,
guns,
saddles,
swords, boxes full of old
letters, "enough
gold and
silver coins to load sixty to eighty
mules," and thousands of bars of
pig iron. Noss loaded his pockets with
coins and jewels and lugged out some of the pig iron. Once he got home and was showing off his find to his wife, Ova, she rubbed one of the bars of pig iron and discovered that it was actually a bar of
gold! Realizing that there were thousands of
gold bars back at the cavern that
no one knew about, Noss' wife later described it as the "happiest moment in our lives."
Unfortunately, a couple of years later, there was a
cave-in that completely blocked the entrance into the
cave. In 1958, after the founding of
White Sands Missile Range swallowed up Victorio Peak,
Air Force personnel found another way in, but it was soon blocked up as well. The gold was apparently lost
forever.
Noss was
murdered in 1949 in an unrelated incident, but his wife kept trying to relocate the cave. For years, she suspected that the
military was
stealing the gold, and she sought
permission from the
government to conduct lengthy searches. For years, all her requests were denied, but eventually, the military agreed to a
search. In 1977,
Ova Noss, along with
Army officials,
professional treasure hunters,
scientists,
reporters,
miners, and curious
onlookers, spent ten days searching Victorio Peak, but turned up
nothing. However, Ova Noss and other spectators said it was obvious that the army had been conducting extensive searches -- there was
evidence that
blasting had occurred, and a number of large
iron doors were erected over some cave entrances. Though the military claims the stories about treasure on
Victorio Peak are just
myths, Ova Noss accuses the Army of
illegally jumping her claim, stealing the gold, and
destroying the entrances to the caves to cover up their
theft.
Research from "It Happened in New Mexico" by James A. Crutchfield, published by Falcon Press Publishing, 1995, pp. 102-104.