A 132-year-old rusty rifle was discovered leaning against a tree in Nevada's Great Basin National Park.
Archaeologists were surveying the area when they found the 1882 Winchester rifle casually leaning against the base of a juniper tree, The Washington Post reported. No one yet knows how many years - or decades - the .44-40-caliber rifle sat propped against the tree, or who put it there.
"It looked like someone propped it up there, sat down to have their lunch and got up to walk off without it," Nichole Andler, the park's chief of interpretation, told The Post of the November 2014 discovery.
Park officials say the surrounding nature worked as an effective camouflage, making the gun look like an awkward branch sticking out of the ground.
"The cracked wood stock, weathered to grey, and brown rusted barrel blended into the colors of the old juniper tree in a remote rocky outcrop, keeping the rifle hidden for many years," park staff wrote on Facebook.
Officials are combing through historic records to determine who purchased the Winchester rifle, which was made and shipped in 1882, according to Q2 News. Winchester made a total of 25,000 of the same gun that year, making it a common rifle back then.
"It was one of those things, sort of the everyman's rifle," Andler told The Post.
The gun's commonness probably caused its price to drop from $50 when production began in 1873 down to $25 in 1882.
At the time the Great Basin was a mining area. However there is a chance the area was used for grazing animals like sheep, so the mysterious rifle could have been used for hunting game, The Post noted.
The wooden-based gun is to be sent for preservation before it's displayed at the Great Basin National Park's 30th birthday and the National Park Service's centennial celebration, park officials said.
