The Oldest Gun Ever Found in America Was Left Behind on a Failed Gold Hunt

In the mid-1500s, a Spanish explorer named Francisco Vázquez de Coronado went looking for the Seven Cities of Gold, a mythical stretch of blinged-out cities somewhere in the American Southwest that didn’t exist, as you could’ve guessed. You might remember hearing the name Coronado as the original owner of the jewel-encrusted golden crucifix on a chain that a teenage Indiana Jones is trying to snatch away from bandits at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

While Coronado failed to find gold and had to settle for being a MacGuffin in the second-best Indiana Jones movie, he did leave behind something almost as valuable to archaeologists: a 40-pound, 42-inch bronze wall gun, the oldest firearm ever discovered in the continental U.S.

Unearthed in 2020 from the remains of a Spanish stone-and-adobe structure at San Geronimo III in present-day Nogales, Arizona, the cannon sat unnoticed for nearly five centuries. A team led by archaeologist Deni Seymour, publishing their findings in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology, confirmed the find was from Coronado’s 1539–1542 expedition, using radiocarbon dating and other archaeological wizardry.

The gun’s size and construction suggest it wasn’t used as battlefield artillery, as it seems designed to be mounted on fort walls or on ship rails. That said, it also doesn’t seem like it was ever used at all. It contained no gunpowder residue and no ammunition. Still, it’s historically priceless.

Researchers also uncovered broken swords, daggers, fishhooks, pottery — all the usual detritus left behind by colonizers and explorers, as Coronado’s crew ditched the area when it turned out the fabled cities of gold were, in fact, just some dusty pueblos. At least they got to see the Grand Canyon.