New Mexico's 17 Tons of Gold

Somewhere in the northwestern corner of San Juan County, New Mexico, seventeen tons of smuggled gold bars were put into the ground during the Great Depression — and by most accounts they have not come out since. The plan behind it reached from a hacienda in Puebla to a barnstormer's Cessna circling above the Four Corners, and every step of it depended on men trusting strangers with fortunes they could not afford to lose. This story was published as "New Mexico's 17 Tons Of Gold" by Hal Douglas in the June 1983 issue of Treasure Search. In this story: A biplane pilot named Wild Bill Elliott, recruited out of Salt Lake City to run sixteen secret cross-border flights A Mexican syndicate of mine owners, ranchers, and a private banker pooling wealth ahead of an expected dollar devaluation A remote mesa near the Four Corners chosen as a cache site because the desert, as one man put it, closes over secrets like still water A retired bandit and a Yaqui Indian hired to cross into New Mexico under the cover of a hunting trip The question of whether any man in the arrangement could truly be trusted with another man's gold Originally published as "New Mexico's 17 Tons Of Gold" by Hal Douglas in Treasure Search, Vol. 11 No. 3, June 1983. #truestory #wildwest #oldwest #frontier #americanhistory #cowboystories #lostgold #treasurehunting #newmexico #smuggling You can find our magazines at: https://www.TrueTalesOfBuriedTreasure...