Found against a tree at Great Basin National Park, this Winchester rifle is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming/NPS
A 132-year-old, well-weathered, lever-action Winchester rifle found against a tree in the backcountry of Great Basin National Park is now on display at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Wyoming, where it will remain until fall when it will return to the park.
While staff at the museum, in Cody, were able to date the rifle through its registry of all firearms manufactured by Winchester, the mystery of how it came to be left lying against a juniper remains.
“The Winchester Model 1873 alone may be the most iconic western firearm of all time,” Ashley Hlebinsky, curator of the center's Firearms Museum, said in an article on the center's website. “This is especially true of its marketing slogan, ‘The Gun that Won the West.’ With all it’s been through, this particular gun has certainly carried on that legend.”
Park staff working out in the field found the rifle in November 2014. Weathered by years of exposure to wind, rain, sun, and snow, the rifle's stock and barrel had turned to grey and brown, making it easy to blend into the tree trunk.
The serial number on the rifle's lower tang corresponds in Winchester records with a manufacture and shipping date of 1882. But the detailed history of this rifle remains unknown. Winchester records do not indicate who purchased the rifle from the warehouse or where it was shipped. A total of 720,610 were manufactured between 1873 and 1916, when production ended. In 1882 alone, more than 25,000 were made.
What has been discovered by the museum staff is that the rifle, while not holding a cartridge in its chamber, did have one stored in the butt. That was revealed when the rifle was taken to the West Park Hospital for an x-ray before museum staff started working on restoring the firearm.
Restoration of the rifle included using an adhesive on the stock to prevent further deterioration of the wood.
The Winchester will be on display at the center until this fall, when it will return to Great Basin to help mark the park's 30th anniversary as well as the National Park Service's centennial in 2016.
X-rays of the rifle showed a cartridge still remained in the stock/West Park Hospital via Buffalo Bill Center of the West
Comments
I'd love for the preservation folks to figure out a way to get that cartridge out and a way to date it (via different chemistry of the gunpowder, bullet, or something). While the rifle could have been left there any time between its manufacture an a few years ago, a younger cartridge would put a more recent cap on the date, and give a pretty good estimate of the date of placement, as I don't know folks who would shoot, let alone go out in the field, with decades old ammunition: too many things can go wrong.