Freemont's Lost Cannon Found

[Havilah_Springs]

Hey You All,

If anyone is interested in the Lost Mountain Howitzer Cannon of General Freemont, here is an interesting link:

http://www.longcamp.com/how.html

Regards, Havilah_Springs

[stefen]

The actual cannon has not been found, only what appears to be parts of a cannon carriage assembly.

It the same as finding a pair of ants together as then announcing that Noah's Ark has been found in the vicinity of XXXX...

There is reasonable doubt of a connection...the actual cannon needs to be found in order to substantiate the announcement of a find.

[Tuberale]

I have to wonder if there were more than 1 mountain howitzer lost in the west. I have found reference to one sunken during a crossing of the Owyhee River in the 1840's. I thought it was a reference to Fremont, but I may be mistaken.

The original location is close to where the waters of Lake Owyhee have backed up to.

Curious.

[Havilah_Springs]

This is not the only cannon that Freemont lost. On his journey to take over the Presidio in Santa Barbara, CA, he lost several cannon, horses, and mules over steep slopes while crossing a pass during a December storm.

[Tom_in_CA]

Thanx for the link. Interesting reading.

At a museum (presidio of Monterey) where I do docent work, they have a piece of a cannon muzzle end, that was dug on the presidio grounds decades ago. It's just the lip/tip end "donut" shaped portion, that's dinner-plate sized circumference. I got to handle and lift the piece, and it's EVERYTHING a man can do to lift this small piece of a cannon. Ie.: it must weight 100 lbs! So I can only imagine the weight of an entire cannon. No wonder Fremont abandoned lugging the thing around, in primitive CA, before roads existed (and only crude trails to try to get carts through).