B5F11I2

Transcribed Text (OCR)

GARY MANGIACOPA ARCHIVE
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Title:      B5F11I2
Slug:       b5f11i2
Categories: Lost Treasure
Source:     https://garymangiacopraarchive.com/b5f11i2
Pages:      2 scanned, 2 extracted
OCR:        Google Vision API (document_text_detection)
Processed:  2026-06-06
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adventure
Billions in bullion:
finders keepers?
D
id Terry Delonas' grand-
father really find more
than a billion dollars' worth
of centuries-old Spanish bullion
in a dusty New Mexico cavern?
Or did he make it all up?
Those questions have dogged
Delonas, 43, since childhood. Fifty-
five years ago, his grandfather Mil-
ton "Doc" Noss claimed he found,
then lost, a treasure-trove in New
Mexico's San Andres mountains, in
what is now the U.S. Army's top-
secret White Sands Missile Range.
So Delonas founded the Ova
Noss Family Partnership, an explo-
ration company named for Doc's
wife, Delonas' grandmother, and
composed mostly of relatives. They
began a $1 million hunt in Septem-
ber, using ground radar to pinpoint
cavities in a mountain called Vic-
torio Peak. The radar detected sealed
caves. Now they're drilling holes
and plan to lower video cameras,
lights and electronic range finders
to explore. Delonas' search permit
from the Army expires next May.
This is the fourth search since
1960 for the treasure of Victorio
Peak, just one of several treasure
hunts across the country. Billions of
dollars in treasure is believed to be
in U.S. territory, and high-tech
equipment makes its discovery
practical for the first time (see boxes).
"Worst case, we'll find impor-
tant archaeological evidence that
could change Southwest history,"
says Delonas, a former ad executive
Talk about rich relatives:
Terry Delonas, above, of
Las Cruces, N.M., has five
more months to find his
grandfather's billion-dollar
buried treasure. The search
already has cost $1 million.
16 USA WEEKEND December 4-6, 1992
COLORADO
NEW
MEXICO
Albuquerque
25
Truth or
Consequences
White
Sands
Missile
Las Cruces
Range
TEXAS
MEXICO
Photograph by Joel Salcido

[PAGE BREAK]

who leads the search full time from
Las Cruces, N.M. "Best case, we'll
find 18,000 metal bars with a sub-
stantial amount of gold in them."
The search is funded by his group,
plus money from "shareholders,"
who'll get a portion of whatever is
X's also mark these spots
Padre Island, Texas. In 1553, 16
Spanish galleons sank in a hurricane off
the coast. Only two of the ships have been
recovered. Estimated value: $2 billion.
Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. In
1750, four Spanish galleons were lost.
Estimated value: more than $1 billion.
Cape Canaveral, Florida. In 1563, the
Spanish galleon La Madaleña sank in a
hurricane. Estimated value: $750 million.
found. (Treasure-hunting laws vary
by state. Victorio Peak, on an Army
base, is under federal control. If trea-
sure is found and no one else claims
it successfully, Delonas can keep it.)
Doc Noss was a hard-drinking,
self-taught podiatrist from Hot
Springs, N.M. (later renamed Truth
or Consequences, after the TV
show). While exploring the rocky
desert in 1937, he took shelter from
a storm in an opening in a craggy
400-foot rise, Victorio Peak. After
squeezing through rocks, Doc said,
he came to a cave "big enough to
hold a freight train." Skeletons lay
on the floor, surrounded by chests
brimming with Spanish jewelry,
coins and artifacts. Thousands of
metal bars were stacked in piles.
Doc brought out what he could
carry and showed the treasures to
his wife. Over the next two years,
Doc said, he stashed hundreds of
copper, silver and gold bars in the
desert. (The 1934 Gold Act made
owning gold illegal.) No trace ever
has been found. In 1939, Doc hired
a mining engineer to use dynamite
to widen the crawl space into the
cavern. Instead, the blast caused
a landslide that sealed the cavern.
Doc spent the next decade try-
ing to retrieve the treasure. In 1949,
he argued with an investor, who
pulled a gun and killed him. The
whereabouts of the treasure has
since remained a stubborn secret.
Doc's family still has items he
purportedly found, including silver
bowls, leather maps and a jewel-
handled dagger, all dated to the
18th century, and a 16th-century stir-
rup. "My mother, aunt and cousins
all held gold bars," Delonas says.
The most common story about
the treasure's origin is that in 1796
French Jesuit Felipe LaRue brought
Apache converts from Mexico to
mine gold discovered at Victorio.
Expeditionaries tortured and killed
LaRue and his workers when they
refused to tell where the gold was.
Delonas seems to be on the right
track: Drilling has turned up direc-
tional marks he says are Doc's. But
even if the search is in vain, the leg-
end will live on. Some contend that
the Army has secretly liberated the
treasure. A 1961 Army dig is con-
firmed in papers obtained through
the Freedom of Information Act.
<-a
Jim Eckles, public affairs spe-
cialist for the missile range, believes
story of treasure is just that-
and laughs at claims that
the Army has it. "We have trouble
keeping our real secrets secret.'
the
story
By Jim Robbins
High-tech hunting
Newfangled devices that can detect hidden treasure at sea:
A magnetometer is being used to hunt a billion-dollar treasure (which may include
a life-sized solid-gold sculpture of a Madonna and child) from a Spanish galleon that
sank off the Bahamas in 1656. The magnetometer picks up deviations in the Earth's
magnetic field caused by iron. If the iron source is a cannon, treasure may lie nearby.
Divers excavate booty with "mailboxes" - long, wide tubes that redirect a boat's
propeller wash to the ocean floor to blow away sand.
The 1985 search for the Titanic used sidescan sonar, which makes sound-wave
images of the ocean floor. When the pictures showed nothing, expedition co-leader
Robert Ballard "mowed the lawn" with an underwater camera vehicle, which
found one of the ocean liner's boilers. W
- Richard Vega
USA WEEKEND ⚫ December 4-6, 1992 17