F.
Lee Bailey, the famous lawyer, entered the arena in 1973, contacting officials
in Washington, D.C., asking for help. His clients, according to him, had
possession of several gold bars. Baily made it clear that forty of his clients
lived in the White Sands area and knew the exact location of the gold.
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 the gold ingot was far from pure.
No real conclusion was drawn from the tests, and no value was reported for the
gold.
Bailey
would eventually say that there were two groups involved; a small group who
found the treasure and a larger group made up of businessmen who were financing
various operations including the legal maneuvering involving ownership and
permissions to enter the missile range.
It
was also in 1973 that several people sneaked onto the missile range to dynamite
a rock wall in a side canyon of Victorio Peak. They claimed that if you knew
how to read the pictographs found on the rock wall, you could find the
treasure. They wanted to destroy that information.
 |
| The San Andres Mountains, home of Victorio Peak. Photo copyright by Kevin Randle |
Bailey
and his group continued to make claims. The original story told, of 292 bars of
gold, escalated into thousands of gold bars. At one point someone claimed that
more than two hundred billion dollars were hidden in those caves. The more
rational pointed out that Fort Knox held just over six billion dollars.
Others
came forward, including Roscoe Parr, who claimed tht Noss had told him how to find
the gold and how to divide it once it was recovered. There was nothing in
writing from Noss but, according to Parr, Noss had asked him to make sure his
wishes were carried out after his death.
Another
group formed around Fiege. To complicate things, still another group formed
around the second Mrs. Noss, Violet Noss Yancy. There was something called the
Shriver Group and Expeditions Unlimited, which was a Florida-based treasure
hunting group. And, of course, those involving Ova Noss.
Ova
Noss tried to end it all by suing the Army for a billion dollars. In the
documents filed with the court, she claimed that it would take no more than
forty-eight hours to find the gold with four people to make the search. Once
they had located the treasure, they would place the gold with the appropriate
government agencies for safekeeping until ownership could be established.
The
suit was dismissed.
A
compromise among all the claimants was arranged by Norm Scott who used his
Expeditions Unlimited to represent them all. The Army saw the wisdom in this
and agreed to it. Operation Goldfinder was postponed twice but in March 1977,
the search finally began.
And
failed.
Just
as the searches that had preceded, Operation Goldfinder failed to produce any
evidence that gold, or anything else, was hidden on or in Victorio Peak. One
group of claimants tried to salt the site with fake gold bars but were caught
in the act and ordered out be Scott.
What
was most valuable, from the Army’s position, was that those claiming something
was hidden in the caves and tunnels of Victorio Peak had had their opportunity
to search. They found nothing. The Army then shut down all operations, claimed
that nothing was hidden, and that no additional searches would be allowed in
the foreseeable future.
Scott
held a final press conference after the failure to find anything to verify all
the claims of treasure hidden there. Scott did not consider the search a
failure. He pointed out that the objectives had been realized, with one
exception.
That
exception surrounded the claims of Doc Noss. Those accepting the Noss story
pointed out that it wasn’t proven that the gold wasn’t there. This is arguing
in circles because it was proven that “no treasure was found in the various
locations where most of the claimants told us a cache of gold is hidden.” They
were now claiming that the gold was hidden in an area that had not been
searched.
Even
with the negative results, without any physical evidence that the gold had ever
been there, with only the testimony of a man who was a con artist and
charlatan, there were still those who believed that a huge,
multi-billion-dollar treasure was hidden in Victorio Peak.
Operation
Goldfinder cost $87,000. Scott said that he had no plans for another search.
Such a project would cost half a million dollars and would take a couple of
months. At the conclusion of the press conference, the commanding officer of
the White Sands Missile Range closed the range to any further searches for
treasure.
But
that wasn’t the end of it…
Ova
Noss believed there was gold that belonged to her. For decades, others had
believed as well, providing her with encouragement, legal advice and money. She
was not going to let the dream die. In 1979, Ova Noss returned to Victorio Peak
and posed for photographs. At that time, according to Jim Eckles in the Missile
Ranger (the White Sands Missile Range newspaper), she said, “Like they say.
There’s gold in them thar hills.” She died later that year without ever finding
her treasure.
But,
of course, the search didn’t die with her.
Her
grandson, Terry Delonas, had accompanied Ova Noss to Victorio Peak. It was
clear that he was going to continue the family tradition and the search. He
formed the Ova Noss Family Partnership.
Coming
up: Some Archaeological Evidence, Part Six
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