Scott Swanson
Of The New Era
Clint McCraven figured he’d do a little prospecting on Friday, March 17, but what he found was a real treasure — a flintlock pistol that dates back to before Lewis and Clark.
McCraven, 43, of Sweet Home, had slipped out of the house early that morning, leaving behind his sleeping wife, and had spent a couple of hours with his White’s metal detector along the bank of Quartzville Creek when he located and dug up an oddly shaped piece of metal in the fractured bedrock where the water level had dropped.
“I was just piddling around,” he said. “I’d been finding a lot of pieces of cable and stuff — and I was pitching it into the river so I wouldn’t run across it again.”
He said he started to pitch his latest find, then decided to keep it, not realizing it was the trigger guard for an old pistol. About 20 yards downstream, he found another piece of metal, again oddly shaped. It was the firearm’s action. Another 30 or so yards downstream he found the barrel and most of the rest of the pistol.
He said a local firearms expert told him the pistol had to have been manufactured prior to 1840, since firearms made after that were percussion-cap models.
“This is from the Lewis and Clark era,” McCraven said. “It was probably lost by a trapper or explorer, or maybe an Indian who got it somewhere by trading.”
He said he hopes to find more of the pistol and find out more about it, possibly from other historical firearms enthusiasts.
“I’d like to find the ramrod,” he said. “But that’s probably going to be more difficult. Most of the time it’s a wooden shaft with a metal button on the end.
“I want to do some more searching,” he said. “I should be able to determine where it came from.”
Melissa Wise, of White’s Electronics, said the pistol “is believed to be the oldest find ever from this area.”
Sbe noted that gold found in Quartzville Creek in the late 1800s spawned a thriving gold town in the area for about 20 years.
McCraven has had his metal detector for about a year, he said. Most of what he’s found hasn’t been real valuable — a lot of old nails, pieces of cable, .22 casings and “a ton of fishing sinkers,” he said.
“I’m just getting started, so I tend to dig up everything.”
He also has to determine how to preserve it — probably by storing it in neutralized water.
“I’m getting real leery of handling it,” he said, noting that the wood is in very fragile condition. “I’m afraid it’ll fall apart. I need to figure out how to keep it from deteriorating further.”