Victorio Peak

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

OHIO The 7 cities of Cibolo, sheesh . According to my data they do exist, but not in the US, but in the border between Sinaloa and Durango Mexico.

They are located in the cañon/Barranca de los Conejos. The illusion of gold came from the habit of painting their homes with pyrites mixed in the lime which gave them a golden look.

They also had many figures and painting of buffalo - "Cibolo means Buffalo"

In the floor of a large flat area used for sports, many many complete intact ceramic articles have been found. This is rare, since they were apparently deliberately buried intact. When a native in those yeas buried a bowl etc, he first shattered it to allow it's spirit to be free.

The story of the 7 cities of Cibolo was deliberately started to encourage exploration in the north by the Gov't, it definitely worked.

Tropical Tramp

 

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[gollum]

Hey,

There are a couple of Cibolas. One was the Pueblo, and the other was the Kingdom. Here is a section of a map from 1650. I have circled the two Cibolas in green. If you look a little to the East, you will see Quivira. That is also mentioned in Coronado's letter, but on this map, it looks way South of where he says it is.

Best,

Mike

 

[gollum]

That map is only one of many available in Hi Resolution from the Library of Congress at:

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/gmdhtml/gmdhome.html

Here is the full map, but you can't read the fine print. I had to downsize it to post. The full mapsize from the L.O.C. is something like 93 inches by 65 inches and is 22MB in size.

Best,

Mike

 

[gollum]

Oh and Doc,

When I say South, I mean SOUTH! Coronado said he travelled East from Cibola to Quivira. Look where Quivira is on this map. It's down near Yucatan!

Best,

Mike

 

[Oroblanco]

Dang Gollum and Diving Doc, LOVE those antique maps! If I were a billionaire, I would become a collector of them.

They did have a method of computing longitude with some degree of accuracy, though not a method that would work for a ship sailing on the sea - by observing carefully the exact timing in lunar eclipses and comparing it to a chart of the time(s) for known locations a pretty good longitude calculation could be made. The Jesuit fathers did this and there were special "cosmographers" who also were trained in the lunar method, which information was (in theory) supposed to get transcribed onto the maps but we find many errors in those old maps.

There were even more ancient methods involving keeping time from the departure point of a ship, and comparing the time to the moment of high noon observed aboard ship; these types of observations were NOT too accurate as the ancient time keeping methods (clysedras, hourglasses etc) were not accurate enough, but were useful - though it was hopeless on a cloudy day and the longitude estimation could only be done at the moment of high noon. A method used on land is recorded in the days of the Punic wars, (and earlier, in Alexander's empire) by the observation of the moment the watch fires were lit (the lighting was supposed to be done at the instant of sunset) on distant towers across the Mediterranean, though we do not know exactly how this method was calculated, even Julius Caesar mentioned it. On many ancient maps, for locations that were not measured for longitude (by the lunar method) the cartographers simply estimated it by known compass readings and mileages, which were often quite wrong.

The knowledge that magnetic north was not aligned with true north dates pretty far back too, in fact it could be argued that Pytheas (a Greek explorer ~400BC) was first to take note of it, and stated that the North Star is not over the precise point of the North Pole, saying it was off by about three degrees which is pretty close to the fact! Of course the magnetic compass was not "invented" (for the west, the Chinese had working compass devices at minimum 400 BC) officially until the dawn of the age of exploration, but simpler compasses had been in use. Even Columbus noted magnetic declination errors in his voyages of discovery.

Anyway thanks for posting those maps! I just think they are the coolest things!
Oroblanco

 

[spyguy]

I've heard from more than one source that Doc Noss was a con man and swindler. He would have common copper bars coated in gold and then use them to try and get grub$take money. Fact is, he claimed repeatedly to have brought bars to a local assayers office though an exhaustive search could find NO records at all.... He was shot dead by a "friend" he was trying to partner with (see also cheat) on the Victorio Peak treasure around 1948. It's extremely likely that this huge treasure in a New Mexico cave existed only in his mind and was perpetuated from there into legend. It's possible that the government found a mine shaft and removed gold from it as any normal mining operation. As for Noss's claims of: "gold bars stacked like cordwood, jewelry, swords and coins" keep your shit kickers on!

 

[gollum]

Hey Spyguy,

I don't know where you live, but I can guarantee you that the United States Government would not have mined anything. At best, they would have leased the operation to somebody and just taken about 50% off the top. They don't do the work, they just skim the profits.

Read the Freeadom Magazine article about the story. That writer seemed to have done a much more credible job of investigating the story. Here are a few quotes from the article:

"Ova Noss, her two sons, Harold and Marvin, and her two daughters, Letha and Dorothy, helped Doc in the strenuous task of removing the bars, one at a time, from the depths of the peak. Letha told Freedom that she herself handled 12 to 15 of the bars, “and I even put one up and hid it for four days.”

"Six men who worked with Doc in removing the gold — C.D. Patterson, Don Breech, Edgar F. Foreman, Leo D. O’Connell, Eppie Montoya and B.D. Lampros — later signed sworn affidavits regarding their experiences."

"One person who worked with Doc Noss inside the cave was Jose Serafin Sedillo of Cuchillo, New Mexico. He told this writer that the gold bars in the cave were “stacked like cordwood.”

Jose Sarafin was also the man who one of the Spanish suits of armor recovered from the cave.

"Lampros, for example, described having his photograph taken with Colonel Willard E. Holt of Lordsburg, New Mexico; each held an end of a bar while it was being sawed in half."

If you want to believe government's version, I need to ask you four questions:

1. Is there a name associated with the gold electroplated copper bars?

2. Did you do the exhaustive research with Southern NM assayers offices, or did you take the word of the online sources?

3. Did you speak to anybody who knew Doc or Ova Noss?

4. Do you know why Doc's partner shot him dead?

I will answer some of the questions myself

1. No! There are no names with which to verify the copper bar story.

2. The writer of the Freedom Magazine story talked to members of the Noss Family, as well as people who helped them when they took out some of the items from the Peak.

4. The story Charlie Ryan told in court was not the whole truth. Yes, an argument about the bars did erupt. Yes, Doc probably did go outside to get a gun, but the whole thing most likely started because Doc and another guy went out the night before and moved the bars, because he did trust Ryan. Another quote from the Freedom magazine Article:

"The night before his death, perhaps sensing that a business deal was going sour, Doc enlisted the aid of a cowboy named Tony Jolley to shuffle the locations of various stashes of the bars. There were 110 gold bars moved that night, according to an affidavit obtained by this writer and sworn to by Jolley.

The affidavit states, in part: “In March of 1949 I handled 110 rough [sic] poured bars of gold in the area which is now White Sands Missile Range which is now the area of Victorio Peak. On the night of March 4, 1949, I went with Doc Noss and dug up 20 bars of gold at a windmill in the desert east of Hatch, New Mexico, and reburied them in the basin where Victorio Peak is. We took 90 bars ... stacked by a mine shaft at Victorio Peak and reburied them 10 in a pile scattered throughout the basin with the exception of 30 bars that we buried in a grassy flat near the road we came out on.”

Best,

Mike

 

[gollum]

Hey B,

You are correct. As of 1933, Americans were not allowed to own more than five (5) ounces of gold (with a few exceptions. This would not have been one of them). Doc Noss was right to be paranoid about the Government coming in and scooping everything up.

But....he wasn't THAT paranoid. Look at the quotes from the Freedom Magazine Article, and you will see that there were quite a few people who saw and handled the gold and artifacts.

Best,

Mike

 

[gollum]

I'm leaning towards believing it.

After reading both version of the story at the WSMTR (White Sands Missile Test Range) Website, and the Freedom Magazine Website, I have concluded that Freedom Magazine has no horse in the race (so to speak), and they also did a MUCH better job of interviewing people, and researching the WHOLE story.

I give a good bit more weight to the Freedom Magazine Article. I can also EASILY understand why the US Government would want to make Noss look like a fraud, and have people dismiss his heirs claims.

best,

Mike

 

[Oroblanco]

Hello again,
I can tell you this, if it were all a "scam" and a "fraud" then why would famous attorney F.Lee Bailey as well as US Attorney General John Mitchell get involved on the side of the Noss family? There are also photos of some of the artifacts which were recovered, of course they could have been faked but when you consider all the factors it looks like there was something and as you might expect good old Uncle Sam "got it". I rather doubt there is anything there to find today, other than a hole in the ground.

Oroblanco

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI, on my post # 33, about the 7 ciudades de Cibola, I mistakenly entered "Conejos", sorry that should have been "Conejaqui".

Tropical Tramp

 

[spyguy]

Part of TN is debating, sharing knowledge and getting at the truth behind treasure legends. Nobody here knew or interacted w/ Doc Noss so anyone's theory is as valid as anyone elses. With that in mind I'd like to add to my post from the other day discounting Doc Noss's story. A question nobody above has answered so far is: Why was Noss who supposedly discovered a huge treasure that could be sold (and recovered) piece by piece on the black market always broke Clearly, Noss was ALWAYS trying to involve guys like the one who shot him for more ca$h to finance the recovery. Yeah, gold was illegal to own back then but drugs are too, yet noone has any problem finding willing buyers....
Someone else above pointed out that lawyers F. Lee Bailey became involved with the Noss family as did John Dean which is true. But Bailey also represented O.J. and was disgraced and disbarred for his dealings with a known drug king pin more recently. And Dean, well, he was one of the KEY players with Nixon and Watergate. These two lawyers of dubious reputation becoming involved hardly gives weight or creedence to the initial treasure story! Bailey DID produce a gold bar that he claimed was from the site of Noss's treasure, but carbon dating was still in it's infancy then in the 70's and they weren't able to prove conclusively that it matched with the era & origin suggested by Noss's story (i.e. early Spanish). The bar he produced although real gold
was probably just a ruse to get the rights to investigate further on behalf of the Ova Noss family. A trick nobody would put past a greedy lawyer milking a hopeful family for billable hours.
I'm not familiar with the article from 'Freedom' magazine cited religiously above. In fact, despite being extremely well read I've never even HEARD of this magazine. I do know that the Victorio Peak treasure tale is intriguing and sells copy so I can only believe that including the article cited above couldn't hurt sales and circulation of an otherwise obscure publication. One of my sources is a book by a former army sergeant named Kevin D. Randle who really did do his homework and discounts the Noss story as a hoodwinking by old Doc. The weight of the evidence from other books also paints Doc in a less than flattering light although I can't remember all those titles and authors. Just google or do a library search on "victorio peak"....
NO DOUBT --- Victorio Peak is one of the most pervasive and fascinating stories in treasure lore, but our job as treasure hunters is more about science than art! Conspiracy theorists will continue to debate it just like they do Jack the Ripper and other famous cases. In short, people will believe what they want to believe. But for those of you who still accept Noss's story and some of the above posts as gospel, I've got some swampland down here in Florida I'm selling --- CHEAP! It's target rich for treasure hits too. Be sure to contact me soon though, because an offer this good definitely won't last long!
HH
-spyguy

 

[gollum]

Part of TN is debating, sharing knowledge and getting at the truth behind treasure legends. Nobody here knew or interacted w/ Doc Noss so anyone's theory is as valid as anyone elses. With that in mind I'd like to add to my post from the other day discounting Doc Noss's story. A question nobody above has answered so far is: Why was Noss who supposedly discovered a huge treasure that could be sold (and recovered) piece by piece on the black market always broke Clearly, Noss was ALWAYS trying to involve guys like the one who shot him for more ca$h to finance the recovery. Yeah, gold was illegal to own back then but drugs are too, yet noone has any problem finding willing buyers....
Someone else above pointed out that lawyers F. Lee Bailey became involved with the Noss family as did John Dean which is true. But Bailey also represented O.J. and was disgraced and disbarred for his dealings with a known drug king pin more recently. And Dean, well, he was one of the KEY players with Nixon and Watergate. These two lawyers of dubious reputation becoming involved hardly gives weight or creedence to the initial treasure story! Bailey DID produce a gold bar that he claimed was from the site of Noss's treasure, but carbon dating was still in it's infancy then in the 70's and they weren't able to prove conclusively that it matched with the era & origin suggested by Noss's story (i.e. early Spanish). The bar he produced although real gold
was probably just a ruse to get the rights to investigate further on behalf of the Ova Noss family. A trick nobody would put past a greedy lawyer milking a hopeful family for billable hours.
I'm not familiar with the article from 'Freedom' magazine cited religiously above. In fact, despite being extremely well read I've never even HEARD of this magazine. I do know that the Victorio Peak treasure tale is intriguing and sells copy so I can only believe that including the article cited above couldn't hurt sales and circulation of an otherwise obscure publication. One of my sources is a book by a former army sergeant named Kevin D. Randle who really did do his homework and discounts the Noss story as a hoodwinking by old Doc. The weight of the evidence from other books also paints Doc in a less than flattering light although I can't remember all those titles and authors. Just google or do a library search on "victorio peak"....
NO DOUBT --- Victorio Peak is one of the most pervasive and fascinating stories in treasure lore, but our job as treasure hunters is more about science than art! Conspiracy theorists will continue to debate it just like they do Jack the Ripper and other famous cases. In short, people will believe what they want to believe. But for those of you who still accept Noss's story and some of the above posts as gospel, I've got some swampland down here in Florida I'm selling --- CHEAP! It's target rich for treasure hits too. Be sure to contact me soon though, because an offer this good definitely won't last long!
HH
-spyguy

Hey Spyguy,

Did you even read the Freedom Magazine Story? It doesn't sound like it. Freedom Mag has been around a long time. It is owned by the Church of Scientology (I am not a Scientologist, and I make no arguments for or against Scientology). I am very well read about the Victorio Peak story as well. How can you claim to be so well read, and not know more than one side of the story? This version is the most well researched I have found. Here is the link to the magazine article:

http://www.freedommag.org/english/vol18I10/index.htm

You seem to dislike F. Lee bailey for some reason. While he did represent OJ, he also represented Dr. Sam Shepard (wrongfully accused of his wife's murder), and Capt. Ernest Medina (wrongfully implicated in the infamous My Lai massacre in Viet Nam). If you are so well read, then you know why he was disbarred. Have you read his side of the story? Probably not. Here is what he says about it:

"He thinks he was unfairly targeted in the case. Bailey's client, convicted drug smuggler Claude Duboc, gave Bailey several million dollars' worth of stock, which Bailey said he could have sold that day. But he didn't, and the stock's price rose considerably.

"They [the government] decided they wanted it back, so they created a story that I was holding it—for the first time in history, a defense lawyer holding property in trust for the government," he said. "And the judge said he believed that and put me in jail until I could raise enough money to pay the loans on the stock and give it to the government. So I am pretty embittered that that happened and, number two, that that was used by the bar to say, 'Well, you're guilty of trust violations.'"

There is ample evidence to show that Bailey was railroaded in that case, as he stuck it to a Florida Court in a 1998 fraud case regarding William McCorkle (you can research that one) for about $9 million dollars.

BUT......let's assume for the sake of discussion, that both Bailey and Dean are complete scumbag attorneys. They are both well-to-do scumbag attorneys, and like all scumbag attorneys, why would they jump into a 30 year old case that was based on nothing? Doesn't sound like any scumbag attorneys I know (and I know some). The ONLY reason a scumbag attorney would jump into something like that, would be if they REALLY believed that there was going to be a big payday. That type of scumbag attorney charges about $2000-$3000 per hour for legal work.

You state:

Why was Noss who supposedly discovered a huge treasure that could be sold (and recovered) piece by piece on the black market always broke Clearly, Noss was ALWAYS trying to involve guys like the one who shot him for more ca$h to finance the recovery. Yeah, gold was illegal to own back then but drugs are too, yet noone has any problem finding willing buyers....

You obviously have no idea how difficult it is to unload a lot of gold bullion on the "black market" It would be very difficult now (when it's legal to own bullion), and in the late 1930s, dang near impossible (unless you had the connections (he didn't). Drug dealers have a lot of connections that enable them to sell their wares. If you found 100 kilos of cocaine, do you think you could sell it without getting arrested or murdered? Probably not. I have wealthy friends who could probably buy all the gold under the table I could find, but Doc Noss was not a wealthy man, and didn't have wealthy friends. People like you who think things like that are so easy, are the same ones that would get arrested or killed trying to sell it (drugs or gold bullion).

Here are some of the problems Doc Noss would have faced:

1. The gold needed to be assayed to determine actual gold content. Most assayers keep written records of assays, and report to the Federal Government. He would have had to find an assayer who would assay his gold in secret. How would Doc know whom to trust to keep THAT secret?

2. Gold in excess of five (5) ounces was illegal for regular citizens to own from 1933 until the mid 1970s. He would have had to find someone who had the cash on hand to buy all that bullion, that he could also trust not to murder him, as well as keep the secret (that rules out the mob. They would have killed him and kept it all).

3. Do you remember a little thing that happened on Thursday, October 24th, 1929? Not much. Just a little thing called "Black Thursday." Ring a bell? The great stock market crash that ushered in the Great Depression? The depression we didn't really come out of until after WWII. How many people do you think were around central New Mexico who had the cash to buy up 93,000,000 troy ounces of gold bullion?

4. Keeping the gold hidden until a buyer could be found. It could be years before the investor/investors could be found. What do you do with all that gold in the meantime? You do just what his family members said he did. Get some trustworthy friends, and take it out of the cave, and hide it where only you can find it.

5. The United States Government. Noss was very paranoid that Uncle Sam would jump in and take away whatever he had found. He was right to be paranoid. That's exactly what Uncle Sam would have done. Since it was illegal for private citizens to own gold (and there was no liberal media to fight Uncle Sam), they could say and get away with just about anything they wanted (which they did).

6. How does he show up anywhere with a bag of gold (nuggets, dust, or bullion), without drawing a LOT of attention in the Dust Bowl area of central New Mexico. The second he tried to sell ANY appreciable amount of gold, he would have had locals and Feds crawling up his backside with a microscope!

7. Whom do you trust? Do you REALLY know your friends and family THAT well? 93,000,000 troy ounces of gold does things to people. Whom do you entrust with the location? Who wouldn't kill you, and keep the secret for themselves? If you REALLY think about it, that question is actually pretty difficult!

I think that covers my end of the argument for now.

Best,

Mike

 

[Oroblanco]

Ditto, Mike is right on the money (cheap pun intended hee hee) it is not that easy to sell gold bars on the black market, just letting some of these characters KNOW that you have such things could very easily lead you to being kidnapped or murdered. It is not like selling a diamond ring or stolen watch, this is something worth a great deal of money and the fact that Noss was in fact murdered only serves to help point up how difficult it is to exchange a pile of gold bars for "under the table" cash.

Just a side note here but it is not possible to obtain a carbon date from a gold bar, in fact there is virtually no way to "date" an object made of gold unless it has a date on it, or is found with other items that CAN be carbon dated. They could do metallurgical tests on the gold and identify the metals in it, the proportions of each, or if they are cast "dore" bars (straight from the mines, not refined in any way) the location of the ore vein which produced the gold might be identifiable.

Oroblanco

 

[spyguy]

I stand corrected by Oroblanco on the tests performed on Bailey's gold bar. They were in fact metalurgical not carbon based, but the result was still inconclusive. I did get to read the article posted by gollum, but it is hardly compelling evidence. Most of the info in it was rehashed and mined out in other sources before. A book called '100,000,000 million tons of gold' was where I got my 'Operation Gold Finder' info which included the Bailey info. The article in 'Freedom' magazine was 20 years old and put out by the Church of Scientology, two words come to mind here --- Tom Cruise.
But there was one new piece of info in it I hadn't read before linking LBJ to the Victorio Peak treasure recovery. This is where the story started entering the realm of UFOs, big foot, & hollow earth --- at this point I "lost the plot." The problem with these type of BIG government conspiracies is that the bigger they get, the more they stretch credibility beyond the breaking point. If the US government profited from so much gold, why didn't the world spot price for it fluctuate accordingly? Some 93,000,000 troy ounces by one account although the number grows with age and with each retelling.
There's a few key points to keep in mind here: #1 is that the area of Victorio Peak is and has been part of sensitive military area called the White Sands Missile Range. Intstead of a conspiracy, it's more likely they just didn't want people coming in and poking around in there. Although they allowed 'Operation Gold Finder' in during the late 70's for several weeks which was based on the info provided to Ova Noss by Doc and it was a miserable failure!
#2 Is that Doc described more than just gold bars being in that cave. He talked of coins, jewelry, and artifacts like swords. SO, from the time he supposedly discovered all this loot in the late 30's to when he was killed in the late 40's you're telling me he couldn't have found a way to get rid of some of it and get rich SLOW Instead, he was always broke and hitting people up for financing. The very pickup truck he died in was financed by the guy who shot him.
Occam's Razor is an old philosophic saw: It runs along the lines of when trying to explain something like Victorio Peak start with the simplest explanation (i.e. Doc Noss was a sophisticated con man) and add more complex scenarios. The idea being that after you've covered all the most outrageous possibilities like those mentioned in 'Freedom' the answer comes back to simple basics.
Victorio Peak is the classic case where something can't be conclusively proven so it feeds wild speculation. With no hard evidence and with the KNOWN facts about Noss my swampland here in Florida is still for sale to any interested buyers....
HH
-spyguy

 

[gollum]

Hey Spyguy,

As far as I know, the number has not grown at all. The 93,000,000 Troy Ounces is the number given by Capt. Orby Swanner, who claimed to have been at the site overseeing the MPs (He was an MP at WSMTR in 1961), who were guarding the gold as it was being taken out by the military. Captain Swanner's name was also found in one of the lower shafts, burned into the wall. The military, at first, denied Captain Swanner was ever stationed at WSMTR, but when he proved them liars, by producing a ton of paperwork proving he WAS stationed there during the period he indicated, they were forced to recant their statements. I think it was Socrates who said, "If you can't trust them with the little things, how can you trust them with the bigger ones?" Captain Swanner has NEVER been shown to have lied about ANY part of his story, but the Government has!

Why is it so hard to believe that LBJ took some of the loot? LBJ was a crook (a well known one). Anybody who lived in Texas from the late 1950s on can attest to that. And believe me, if 93,000,000 Troy Ounces of gold were dicovered, he would have know about it. What the article states is that many people used the gold as a personal checking account, and that a lot of this gold was used to pay for black ops all during the sixties

Because the magazine is wholly owned and operated by the Church of Scientology, does that mean that all it's stories are BS? Freedom Mag received an award from the National Federation of Press Women (founded 1937), for an article about the "Duplessis Orphans" (research that name yourself. A pretty big story, actually.

About the gold spot price fluctuation you mention; do you really think the government (or ANYBODY for that matter), would try and unload THAT much gold at one time? Not likely.

Why didn't they sell some of the coins or jewelry? Who knows. paranoia can be a harsh thing, but again, I have to ask you, "Who would they sell them to, and not attract attention to themselves?" At the height of the Great Depression (in a dust bowl state at that), where people were lucky to earn $100 per year, how could somebody show up with ANY 200-300 years old gold jewelry or coins, and not be noticed? Remember, a lot of people knew Doc Noss. If he suddenly showed up with coins or jewelry, people would have noticed. Do you know just how desolate that place was in the 1930s? Spyguy, your lack of understanding the situations of the time is not surprising. I don't know, but I assume you are fairly young. I am only 43, but I understand how difficult it would have been to unload ANY of the treasure. Today, I could probably unload a good deal of it, but I would be taking an enormous risk in doing so. The most anybody could really cash out would be abouty $200,000-300,000 per year (and not get noticed).

Are there any old-timers here, who could attest to just how noticed anybody would be who in the 1930s, all of a sudden showed up with any sizeable amount of gold or 200 year old jewelry to sell?

There is also the large number of deaths associated with Victorio Peak. It's sort of like the Kennedy Assasination Witnesses. So many died, in such a short period of time, that it was not possible to have been coincidence.

Of the several deaths, one stands out: A Treasure Hunter of the time named Harvey Snow, was repeatedly warned (by anonymous phone calls) to stay away from the Victorio Peak Matter. In one phone call, he was given the exact locations of all five of his children, and told they would be killed if he didn't leave it alone. He ignored the warnings, and his 14 year old daughter shortly thereafter, was murdered by a gunshot wound to the head. Coincidence?

Best,

Mike

 

[djui5]

For 93,000,000 troy ounces of gold, you could persuade even ultra honest folks to get involved!!!!

Fort Knox anyone? Wouldn't shock me the least bit to find out a lot of it was from there. That's a lot of money for our government

 

[Oroblanco]

Hello Spyguy,

The article in 'Freedom' magazine was 20 years old and put out by the Church of Scientology, two words come to mind here --- Tom Cruise.

While I do consider the source when researching anything, just because a magazine is put out by a religious group that I am not a member of does not make their articles a pack of lies. Tom Cruise may be an oddball, but he is a highly successful actor and quite wealthy, so associating him with a magazine article twenty years ago (when he was not a member of said religious group) is only marginally justifiable. There are other sources if you care to research the matter, but the fact that Bailey and Mitchell got involved should be a strong indicator that there WAS something to it, these boys don't go putting their public necks out for NOTHING. This is not a case where we can provide absolute proof, so we have to fall back to the standard of civil court, that is whether the evidence is more likely true or more likely false. With any great find there are ALWAYS people out there who quickly leap forward to cast aspersions, say it is all lies, etc. If you don't believe this look at what happened when Mel Fisher found the Atocha, there were even university professors making public statements that it cannot be real, Fisher was a con man etc.

Although they allowed 'Operation Gold Finder' in during the late 70's for several weeks which was based on the info provided to Ova Noss by Doc and it was a miserable failure!

If you have done your research into this, you would know that the government has already removed the treasure, and there is little or nothing left to find except perhaps the evidence of the theft, which would be difficult to prove in the extreme.

Occam's Razor is an old philosophic saw: It runs along the lines of when trying to explain something like Victorio Peak start with the simplest explanation (i.e. Doc Noss was a sophisticated con man) and add more complex scenarios. The idea being that after you've covered all the most outrageous possibilities like those mentioned in 'Freedom' the answer comes back to simple basics.

Now I have learned that semi-scientific test known popularly as Occam's Razor, which rule is that when no obvious answer is found, then the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. It is not a hard and fast rule and cannot be. However using the rule of Occam's Razor, which is more likely, that a con man would pursue ONE CON for years, that his family would continue it, that they would hire incredibly expensive lawyers to fight the US government for it, that they would have filed both mining claim and treasure trove claims on it, that a gold bar could be produced, along with jewelry, and that Doc Noss would end up shot to death over it? There have been at least two ex-military men who have come forward and confirmed the story of the stacks of gold bars in a cave in the mountain, why should they ally themselves with a "con man" much less make statements that government trucks and personnel TOOK it? By the rule of Occam's Razor, the Victorio Peak treasure is true! Another way to look at it is through the 'truism' of Sherlock Holmes (fictional detective) when you have discarded everything that is false, what remains must be the truth.

This is where the story started entering the realm of UFOs, big foot, & hollow earth --- at this point I "lost the plot." The problem with these type of BIG government conspiracies is that the bigger they get, the more they stretch credibility beyond the breaking point.

Now why on Earth do you make connections to UFOs, Bigfoot and Hollow Earth to a straightforward report of the finding of a great cache of treasure? They are absolutely NOT the same thing, and while I have not read the article in question, even if such connections were alleged, they have no bearing on the matter. The fact that you have made this connection when none existed only suggests that you have a strongly negative bias about the Victorio Peak treasure and wish to lump it into highly controversial and un-related subjects, with the implication that since no one believes in these unrelated subjects this treasure tale is in the same league. You might be surprised to learn that a majority of Americans believe that UFOs are not fantasy at all;

Sci Fi Wire (Sci Fi Channel), 17-October-02
A new national poll found that 72 percent of Americans believe the government is not telling the public everything it knows about UFO activity, and 68 percent think the government knows more about extraterrestrial life than it is letting on, the SCI FI Channel reported.

CNN, June 15, 1997
Nearly 50 years since an alleged UFO was sighted at Roswell, New Mexico, a new CNN/Time poll released Sunday shows that 80 percent of Americans think the government is hiding knowledge of the existence of extraterrestrial life forms.

Then there is the mention of Bigfoot, I was unable to find any large polls conducted but one done on a physics site showed that less than half of Americans (46%) believe that Bigfoot does not exist!

Hollow Earth is a rather far-fetched theory that is pretty much proven wrong. However by your associating the treasure with UFOs and Bigfoot, you are actually giving it more credence among a majority of readers. Government conspiracies and coverups all a pack of lies? If you believe that, then I really wonder about your researching abilities. Our own government has had numbers of conspiracies, some successful others less so; if you think that such things cannot be kept covered up, look how many years the secret base at Area 51 existed and did secret work and experiments with our government swearing up and down in courts that it simply didn't exist, even when you could drive right up to the gates and LOOK AT IT! The US govt has had conspiracies almost from our beginnings (look up Conway Cabal for instance) and with 93 million ounces of gold for motive there is more than sufficient cause to suspect government hi-jinx and yes theft. You may be putting far more faith in government and their "honesty" than is warranted. I remind you of the Anthrax attacks, remember what was told to the public when the first victim came down with it? (paraphrasing here) 'Oh, he was a stupid man who drank contaminated water from a pond when he was fishing and caught the anthrax that way' and they kept up with the lies until Anthrax letters came to the Senate building and news media personnel. Remember that old truism from Hitler? "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it". Of course you could point this saying at the Victorio Peak treasure, but in that case we have those high-powered lawyers getting involved, the one gold bar that was tested, and behavior that would not fit with any kind of a con. No con man keeps a failing con going, he simply moves on to a more successful one.

Oroblanco

 

[gollum]

Hey Spyguy,

I was going to post JUST the conspiracies that LBJ was involved with that have proven to be true, but size of the post would make even Oro whince! I was pretty familiar with many of his issues, but once I started reading, I didn't know a quarter of them!

I'm going to have to put together a thread, just about LBJ and his shenanigans!

Until I can get that together, trust me! LBJ was up to his ears in scandal from about 1937 until he announced he would not seek a second term of office. You can research yourself for now.

Best,

Mike

 

[Oroblanco]

Hi Gollum (Mike).
If you don't mind spending your time doing it, I think a thread on the 'hi-jinxs' of LBJ would make for really interesting reading! I am aware that there were many but only have read up on a few of them, and those few gave me chills. (NOT the good kind!) He did accomplish some good things, but boy did he ever have a dark side. Anyway if you have the time, I would be an interested reader and bet that others here would find it interesting too. Of course I must be a 'conspiracy theory nut' for even thinking these things.....
Oroblanco