January 20, 2015 – An archaeologist is still baffled by her discovery of a relatively modern relic – a Winchester repeating rifle, the legendary “gun that won the West.” Last November, Eva Jensen and her team were looking for petroglyphs and other ancient Native American artifacts in Nevada’s Great Basin National Park when she came upon the unloaded weather-beaten rifle leaning against a Juniper tree on a remote hillside. They were scouting the area ahead of a controlled vegetation burn.
The .44-caliber rifle is known to have been manufactured in 1882, but who owned it and why it was abandoned remain a mystery.
Link: LAtimes
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