1882 rifle sparks archaeological quest in Nev.
By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times
In a remote Nevada park, a team finds an abandoned Winchester rifle from 1882. Who left it there?
There it was, abandoned for the ages, propped up against a juniper tree in far-eastern Nevada’s Snake Mountains, a Winchester Model 1873 repeating rifle: the gun, as legend goes, that won the American West.
For archaeologist Eva Jensen, it’s something much more — a mystery that continues to baffle the staff at Great Basin National Park: Who owned it? A luckless hunter or miner? Maybe an outlaw on the run?
And how on earth did it get there?
The search for answers has taken the 57-year-old veteran scientist out of the field and into tiny research libraries — scouting out old newspapers, 130-year-old bills of sale, family histories and yellowed letters in several Western states.