
132-year-old rifle found propped against a national park tree - smacktoward
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/14/the-mystery-of-the-132-year-old-winchester-rifle-found-propped-against-a-national-park-tree/
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cmsmith
This kind of isolation is very interesting to me. There is a lot of space out
there, and there are probably a lot of acres that only get one human visitor
every 5 years. I'd give myself a 1% chance of noticing the rifle if I walked
past, based on this picture. So it's not at all surprising that the last time
anyone looked at this tree was in the 19th century.

~~~
ghaff
Highway 50, which runs near there, has been dubbed the Loneliest Road in
America
([http://ponyexpressnevada.com/highway50/index2.html](http://ponyexpressnevada.com/highway50/index2.html))
and that's a relatively populated corridor in that area with small towns
"only" 50+ miles apart. Great Basin in a national park but doesn't get a lot
of visitors relatively speaking and most of those are either going to the
caves or the summit of Wheeler Peak.

~~~
akgerber
The areas right next to parking lots in National Parks are very busy, but
usually once you get a mile down a trail, even in a very popular park, it's
very nearly empty.

~~~
ghaff
It does vary. The most popular National Parks certainly have their busy spots
even a mile away from the road. But your basic point that people on/near road
>> people on any trail >> people a few miles from road is absolutely true.
Even somewhere like Yosemite, you can easily get away from the crush in the
Valley and, especially with backpacking, can get away from most people all
together.

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blfr
$25 in 1882 is about $600 today. That's like losing an iPhone.

~~~
ckinnan
Real per capita income was roughly 1/9 of today's...so it is more like losing
something worth $5,400.

~~~
ctdonath
Making such corrections is interesting. I'd like to hear more comments on it.

Whether it's equivalent current value is $600 (as posted elsewhere) or $5400,
both numbers are believable. The functional difference between a modern $600
rifle and a $5400 one is, to most casual observers, minimal - though the owner
may have reason to pay $4800 for that difference.

~~~
djrogers
In modern terms, anyone selling a $5,400 rifle would be hard pressed to sell
2,500 of them, let alone 25,000 to the civilian market. And while we're making
adjustments, the US population in 1900 was just a hair over 75m, meaning that
one of these was produced for every 3k people.

Don't let the raw numbers fool you - this was an everyman's gun. A good one,
yes. Still though, an everyman's gun.

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spacecowboy_lon
You do wonder if the ower had heart attack or some other acident and there is
a set of human remains nearby presumably local scavengers might make it hard
to find much forensic evidence.

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arethuza
I can't helping thinking of this:

[https://www.jupiterartland.org/artwork/landscape-with-gun-
an...](https://www.jupiterartland.org/artwork/landscape-with-gun-and-tree)

~~~
scoleman
Was my first thought too. Great place, Jupiter Artland.

~~~
arethuza
Have you been to Little Sparta? I saw that Little Sparta was a big influence
for the couple that created Jupiter Artland (and they have works by Ian
Hamilton Finlay) - we went just before it closed for the winter and I thought
it was incredible:

[http://www.littlesparta.org.uk/](http://www.littlesparta.org.uk/)

Can't wait to go back!

~~~
scoleman
I had not heard of Little Sparta. It looks fantastic. Thank you! I will be
visiting this summer for sure.

~~~
arethuza
I didn't think I was going to like Jupiter Artland - I wouldn't describe
myself as a fan of most modern art but I absolutely _loved_ it.

Little Sparta is on another level though - the whole place is a work of art.

I'm also keen to go to the _Garden of Cosmic Speculation_ \- but it's not open
very often:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Cosmic_Speculation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_of_Cosmic_Speculation)

~~~
scoleman
I've been the Jupiter twice and enjoyed both times. I'd known about
Goldsworthy and he's why I went in the first place but have gained
appreciation for others like Jencks etc.

The Garden of Cosmic Speculation, had me at its name. I'll be going along
there to. Cheers, pal. Thank you very much.

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davidw
Not many people in that area these days:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7630869,-114.6965377,9z/data...](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.7630869,-114.6965377,9z/data=!5m1!1e4)
\- then it must have been incredibly remote.

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spiritplumber
Glad they're preserving it. That said, my bet is that with an afternoon in a
machine shop it'd work perfectly!

I'm not into firearms, but rifles like this are an object lesson in how to
design something so that it'll last.

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rifleman44
How old is that tree?

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emcrazyone
@rifleman44 ha! I was thinking the same thing. The tree looks like it has a
small trunk. I was thinking there can't be 100 rings and if there were, it
would be the whole tree.

I'm Mr. Skeptical... It's hard to believe with the tree growth and over a
hundred years of weather that the gun stayed propped up like that. It does
look a little wedged between two trunks but wow...

~~~
rifleman44
The gun could also have been laying down at one point then raised slowly as
the tree grew.

~~~
ars
Trees grow from the top - from the very tip of the branches. The trunk never
moves up, the gun would not raise as the tree grew.

(Grass grows from the bottom, that's why animals can eat it without harming
it.)

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FroshKiller
An unused object persisted for over a century? Would never have happened with
garbage collection.

~~~
shalmanese
it would if you accidentally left two guns pointing at each other.

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Nicholas_C
It's interesting to wonder if the owner thought anyone would find it.

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lubesGordi
I wonder if someone is buried under it.

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litha
You just don't walk off without your gun.

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freedombeer
why do people want to goto space when There aré so many undiscovered gems on
hour doorstep!

~~~
stonogo
I love the irony of an "undiscovered gem" being "a place where a dude forgot
some stuff"

~~~
alxndr
One person's old trash is another person's incredibly valuable archaeological
artifact...

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IgorPartola
Conspiracy theory: it was recently used as a murder weapon and left there to
stump the investigation. This is of course not true, but fun to speculate
about.

