Free Republic

A 132-year-old rifle discovered on a remote rocky outcrop in the heart of the Grand Basin National Park in Nevada is still a mystery as researchers try to find more answers. The Winchester rifle, which was found unloaded in November, has been shipped to the Cody Firearms Museum in Wyoming where it is temporarily on display among 7,000 other guns. Museum workers said there are no records showing who owned the rifle and that its lifter was removed making it able to only fire a single shot at once, according to Fox News.

A 130-year-old rifle found in the Nevada desert last year is fully loaded with mystery—and some of the questions surrounding it might never be answered. The Winchester 1873 rifle was discovered in the Great Basin National Park leaning against a juniper tree in November. But the strange discovery has triggered more questions than answers.

It was a moment frozen in time – an 1873 Winchester repeating rifle propped up against the trunk of a juniper tree exactly where its owner had left it over a hundred years ago. Eva Jensen, an archaeologist out scouring the hillsides of Nevada’s arid Snake Mountains for Native American artefacts, let out an involuntary cry of surprise when she stumbled across the find, and then fell into silence. “I recognised it instantly, but it takes your brain a little while to catch up,” she told The Telegraph. “The reality of it, I let out an exclamation and the...