Story highlights It still has its serial number, and a museum said it was made in 1882

Conservationists will preserve it in its present condition, and it will go on display at a national park

(CNN) If this rifle could talk.

In a gravelly voice, it may recite a yarn of weary settlers swaying on horses' backs in the parched, rocky Nevada wilderness. It may talk about riding in a saddle holster across neighboring Utah more than a decade before it became a state of the union.

Great Basin National Park workers found the Winchester Model 1873 propped against a tree in the desert in November.

National park staff taped the butt of the Winchester Model 1873 rifle to the gun to keep them together.

Who knows how many years the rifle stood there, after someone left behind the model called "the gun that won the West." Did they have to depart in a hurry -- running from danger?

Or did they not see it, as it stood neatly camouflaged against the arid trunk of the juniper tree?

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