Tales of Treasures in New Mexico

There are many famous and well known of treasure tales that have been told about New Mexico. As with many lost treasure tales a lot of the stories told are about lost mines or hidden silver and gold. The tales that are told about the New Mexico region reach back to the beginning of the 1600’s and continue on until the twentieth century.

Victoria Peak tale
This tale is supposed to have occurred in 1798 when Padre LaRue who was working with the Indians in Mexico, found out about riches that were to be found in the northern areas. After a crop failure, his wards were starving and this lead him to take them north to provide them with a more appropriate place to live in and took them to where he thought gold would be found. The group gathered in a basin that had good water and which was under a peak that he had been told had a lot of gold in it. This peak was known as Victoria Peak or Soledad Peak. The Padre discovered the rich vein of gold and he used the Indians to work on the mine for a number of years and would only utilize as much gold as was needed to purchase food and supplies and would store the rest of it in a cavern that was a part of the mine as well. While all this occurred the Padres superiors started to worry about the Padre and his flock given that they had not heard from them. They sent out messengers to go to his original location and there it was reported that the Padre had moved with this flock to the north but had not been given permission to do this move, so troops were sent to find him and to obtain an explanation of what had occurred. As soon as the Padre found out that there were troops coming to find him, he told his men to hide in the mine and to hide all the traces of what was going on. The soldiers had found out that the Indians were purchasing supplies with gold and tired to force the Padre and the people to show them where they were getting the gold from. They refused and a fight started. The soldiers started shooting at the band and killed almost all of them. Some of them escaped and were never heard from again and the ones that had been captured did not say a word. The soldiers searched and searched for the mine but were not successful so they decided to return to Mexico and tell the story.

Milton Ernest Noss (1937), who was a resident of Hatch, New Mexico, believes to have discovered the lost mine when he was hunting in the San Andreas Mountains. Noss said he found a cave that had a stack of gold bars inside on Soledad Peak. It has been said that there was an accident and that he dynamited the entrance shut. He was able to convince investors to help him open it up again however they wasted so much money on it that they stopped. In World War II the area was overtaken by the government and was closed off. Noss was shot and the truth will never be known. Noss’s former wife, known as Ova, made an attempt at retrieving the treasure but she was caught trespassing on government land and was thrown out. However there are some missing pieces to the Noss’s story because one would think that the government would have claimed it if there really was gold in it.