Old Winchester found in Nevada
It was found in the Snake Mountains last November when archaeologist Eva Jensen and a team of other archaeologists were walking in the Great Basin National Park, four or so hours out of Las Vegas, on an expedition for Native American artifacts.
It’s a large park and they were in a remote area, an area that maybe hasn’t been visited by humans for a very long time. It was Jensen that saw the Winchester, leaning up against that juniper tree, half surrounded by leaves and the butt old and worn and looking and looking much like a part of the tree. So old and blended in that Jensen thought someone passing it could very easily not even see it.
But she did see it.
“It was an ‘Oh, my gosh!’ moment,” Jensen said. “I sort of let out this exclamation. Then I couldn’t say anything. At first the staff thought I’d fallen off a cliff. It was just so unexpected that it took a little time for my mind to catch up.”
Seeking answers to rifle’s mystery
Since finding the unloaded Winchester, the rifle legend says won the West, Jensen and others working for the Park have speculated on how it came to be left there. It was obvious to them that it had been there for a very long time, but why would you leave such a rifle there? In its day it was the best. By accident? Lost, unable to find it? Did the owner die out there?
“One thing we all assumed was that someone here had a very bad day,” Jensen said. “One of the staff said, ‘Why do you set your gun down and forget where you put it? That just doesn’t happen.'”
Jensen has looked through old records and old bill of sales, trying to find a clue as to whom the gun had belonged to and how it came to be left on the mountain in the middle of nowhere.
The serial number told her it was made in 1882 but she has learned little else. She’s resigned to the strong possibility that the answers will never be found and is just happy that the rifle was.
“In archaeology, things happen when you have the right light,” she said. “We found the gun right after lunch, in the early afternoon. If the sun had been in a different spot, it might have been shaded and we would have never seen it.”
It will go on display as a part of the museum’s permanent collection of artifacts..
