The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures (7 page)

In spite of the decree from the military, Jones continued to solicit investors and apply for permission to excavate for the treasure he knew lay under hundreds of tons of rock and rubble. A few months later he found an ally in the Post Inspector General, Colonel Ethridge Bacon. Bacon was convinced that the treasure Jones spoke of existed. Though he made several tries, Bacon was never able to convince his superiors that Jones should be granted permission for another attempt. Two years later, Robert Jones died in his sleep in Dallas.

The search for the Huachuca Canyon treasure did not end with the death of Robert Jones. In 1975, the U.S. Army granted permission to Quest Exploration, a California-based treasure hunting company, to try to reach the cache of gold and silver. Quest employed state-of-the-art computerized sensing equipment to determine the location of the chamber described by Jones. During their search, however, Quest officials were informed by the army that any treasure recovered would be placed in escrow until all claims for it were settled in a court of law.

After a week of working at the site, the Quest team abandoned the project; they were not satisfied with the recovery terms. Before leaving the area, they stated that whatever openings and passageways may have existed had most certainly caved in as a result of previous excavation and demolition work.

After the Quest Exploration team left the site, the military closed off Huachuca Canyon and forbade access to treasure hunters. During a final sweep of the canyon, military policemen encountered a small mine shaft nearby in which were found several very old digging tools, a number of Spanish coins, and some glassware. When the find was reported, the officer in charge confiscated the items and instructed the MPs to keep the discovery secret.

The official position of the U.S. Army is that the treasure cache described by Robert Jones does not exist. Unofficially, however, the military continued to attempt to recover the gold and silver as late as 1979. During the autumn of that year, a squirrel hunter who frequented the canyon observed army bulldozers and other heavy equipment working around the site of the old shaft that Robert Jones had fallen into thirty-eight years earlier.

That Robert Jones stumbled into an old mine that contained a fortune in gold and silver ingots in Huachuca Canyon cannot be doubted; the evidence, along with his lifetime commitment to recovering the treasure, is overwhelming. Without a doubt, the mine was operated by the Spanish who were known to frequent this area. Evidence also shows that members of the U.S. military were convinced of Jones’s assertions regarding the treasure cache, even to the point of organizing their own attempt at recovering it. It is known that they invested significant time, energy, and resources into the attempt. Subsequent visitors to the site in Huachuca Canyon have observed that, despite their efforts, the army has never been able to penetrate the mass of rock in order to achieve access to the underground chamber. For all indications, it is apparent that the fabulous Huachuca Canyon treasure has never been recovered and still lies there today in the ruined chamber under tons of rock and rubble.

7

Seventeen Tons of Gold at Lost Mesa

One of the largest caches of gold in the history of the United States is located on a mesa in a remote portion of the desert in San Juan County in the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico. During the mid-1930s, approximately seventeen tons of gold were flown in several trips to this region from deep in Mexico. The gold was delivered to and buried at the top of an isolated flat-topped mountain where it was to be held until certain economic circumstances materialized. When such circumstances were not forthcoming, the parties involved in the caching of this incredible fortune were forced to abandon the site, never to return. According to all available information, the gold is still there. The principal difficulty related to locating and recovering it is in determining which mesa is the correct one. If found, the value of the gold would equal that of the treasury of a midsize nation.

During the summer of 1933, William C. Elliot received an odd telegram at the office of the small crop-dusting service he owned and operated in Midvale, Utah, a few miles south of Salt Lake City. The telegram was from a man named Don Leon Trabuco and it was an invitation for Elliot to fly to a small landing strip near Kirtland, New Mexico, for a meeting. Elliot, who was known as Wild Bill among his pilot friends, had never heard of Don Trabuco, but the message informed him he was to be paid twenty-five hundred dollars for his troubles. He was also instructed to tell no one of the arrangement. The message carried neither information regarding the subject of the meeting nor an explanation as to why Elliot was selected to attend.

Elliot was more than qualified as a pilot. A native of Salt Lake City, he had been employed as a stunt flyer for a circus, at one time owned a charter service, and was currently working as a crop duster helping Utah farmers fight the plague of crickets that was devastating much of the state’s agricultural productivity. Having never made much money at his flying enterprises, Elliot was lured by the large fee and agreed to make the seven-hundred-mile round trip.

Two days later Elliot landed at the tiny Kirtland airstrip. As he was climbing out of his plane, he noticed a tall man in a dark suit walking toward him. The man was a Mexican. Without speaking, he handed Elliot a typed note. It was from Don Trabuco and carried instructions to meet him at the Kirtland Hotel. The Mexican motioned the pilot toward a waiting automobile.

Don Leon Trabuco had a home near the city of Puebla, Mexico. There, Trabuco owned vast parcels of land and ranches. He was also a banker and operated several successful businesses in Puebla. When he met Elliot at the hotel, Trabuco, along with his aides, were expensively dressed. All were very polite, and all spoke English as though they had been educated in the United States. It was rumored that Trabuco was descended from the original Spanish conquistadores who conquered Mexico centuries earlier. It was also told that he was the head of a large, prominent, and extremely powerful family that controlled the politics and economics throughout much of the region where he lived.

As Trabuco spoke, one of his assistants handed Elliot a flight map of an area near Puebla where one of Trabuco’s large ranches was located. Here, Trabuco told the pilot, he was to land his plane and pick up a cargo of gold ingots. After leaving the ranch, Elliot was to fly an evasive pattern back to New Mexico and land at a remote airstrip near a small isolated mesa located a few miles northwest of the town of Shiprock. The assistant pointed out fuel stops along the return route.

Trabuco told Elliot that if he were pleased with his compensation this would be the first of several trips, and that ultimately a total of seventeen tons of gold was to be delivered to the designated site over a period of several weeks. For his efforts, Trabuco told Elliot he would be paid forty thousand dollars in cash. He also informed him that this, and any future business conducted between the two men, was to be kept secret.

Elliot thought about the proposition. Mentally, he calculated how many planes he would be able to purchase and how he could improve and expand his crop-dusting business. Following a few minutes of deliberation, Elliot agreed to the arrangement. Smiling, Trabuco told Elliot to fly his plane to the Puebla ranch the next day. He then handed the pilot twenty-five hundred dollars in cash.

Late afternoon of the following day, Elliot landed his plane and pulled to a stop at the end of a short landing strip near the Trabuco ranch house in Mexico. Within seconds, a number of uniformed guards carrying machine guns met him and instructed him to stand to one side while they monitored the loading of a number of heavy gold ingots into the plane by three laborers. This done, Elliot was shown his quarters and fed dinner.

The next morning after breakfast, Elliot took off and flew the prescribed route back to New Mexico. During the 1930s, eluding the border patrol and other law enforcement authorities was a simple task. This done, he eventually landed his plane at a tiny, rough and rocky makeshift landing strip adjacent to the specified mesa.

By the time Elliot cut his engines, a brand-new pickup truck was driven to the side of the plane. From the cab stepped Don Trabuco himself and two of his assistants. This time, Trabuco was dressed in work clothes: khakis, a safari jacket, and high-topped boots. Elliot noted that there were several shovels and other excavation tools in the bed of the truck.

Elliot was ordered to stand several yards away from the planes as the two assistants unloaded the gold and placed it in the back of the truck. The gold, explained Trabuco, was to be driven to a secret location atop the mesa, wrapped and sealed with wax, and buried. Trabuco informed Elliot he would be contacted within the next few days regarding the next pickup and delivery of gold. The two men shook hands. As Elliot took off and made the turn to head back to Midvale, he observed the vehicle carrying the gold ingots laboring up a narrow and switch-backing rock and dirt road that led up the steep incline toward the top of the mesa.

During the next several weeks, Elliot made a total of sixteen trips to Puebla and back. He estimated he had transported a total of 350 gold ingots, each of which he guessed weighed one hundred pounds.

Elliot grew curious about where the gold was being buried atop the mesa. After his plane was unloaded following one of his deliveries, he took off and circled the mesa twice as he gained altitude, eventually orienting his Cessna in a northwesterly direction toward Midvale and home. As the plane approached the mesa from the southeast, Elliot cut the engines and glided over the flat-surfaced landform in search of Trabuco’s pickup truck. Gazing out the window, he finally spotted it near the western edge of the mesa. Even from this high altitude, he could see three men excavating what appeared to be a shallow trench.

When Elliot made his final delivery, he was invited to another meeting with Trabuco at the Kirtland Hotel. There, he was paid the forty thousand dollars in cash that was promised. He was also informed by Trabuco that in the event that the gold was eventually sold at a specified profit in the future he would be given a significant bonus.

For the next several years, Elliot kept up with the rising and falling prices of gold and observed that the stated expectations of Don Trabuco were never met. Elliot was disappointed, for he looked forward to the bonus he thought he would receive.

One evening, Elliot was reading the newspaper when he spotted an article that described how Don Leon Trabuco and several other prominent Mexican businessmen had been charged with corruption and conspiracy to murder. They were tried, found guilty, and sent to prison. For the next several months, Elliot attempted to keep himself informed of the situation in Mexico and occasionally received news that was provided by contacts he had in the area. One evening on returning home from a crop-dusting job, he received the news that Don Trabuco had died in prison.

Elliot was convinced that the seventeen tons of gold he delivered to the landing strip at Kirtland was still buried atop the remote mesa. He was determined to travel to the area and retrieve it for himself at the first available opportunity.

Time passed, and opportunities were not forthcoming. Elliot’s newly expanded crop-dusting business, along with a charter flying service he started, was making significant profits and kept him busy. As a result, he found it difficult to leave long enough to attempt to retrieve the gold.

Years passed, and World War II broke out. The patriotic Elliot enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. With his flying experience, he was sent immediately to the war theater in England. In December 1944, Elliot was reported missing in action. Two months later it was discovered that his plane had been shot down. He and his copilot were killed.

As far as can be determined, by 1950 all of the principals involved in caching the seventeen tons of gold atop the isolated mesa in northwestern New Mexico were either dead or far away in Mexico. According to some people who Elliot took into his confidence and told about the massive treasure, it likely still lies atop the mesa buried in the shallow trench.

Because so few people were aware of the existence of this incredible treasure cache, only a handful of adventurous individuals have undertaken a search for it. All were unsuccessful. The mesas found in northwestern New Mexico are rarely, if ever, visited and explored.

Elliot left no notes or maps related to the treasure, apparently trusting everything to memory. Most of the information about this multimillion-dollar cache came from sparse information that Elliot shared with a small number of friends.

What is known is that, while the mesa that houses this fabulous treasure is not the largest in the area, it still covers hundreds of acres. Other than that, the only other concrete information available is related to the fact that the treasure is still buried on the western end.