Cannon Cannot: Tug of Civil War Over Butte Relic

“Pry it from our cold dead fingers”, says the Army's National Artillery Museum in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Butte citizens may be left with that impression anyway, after a request to return a Civil War cannon to its original site was turned down dead-bang. The 5,920–pound Big Boomer was gifted to a Butte Civil War veteran’s group in 1903 by copper king William A. Clark, but in 1960 was rolled south to the Fort Sill Museum. After 47 years in Oklahoma, Norman DeNeal of Butte wants to say, “Never mind” to that little oversight. “We’d Sooner not”, came the reply. The sabers are rattling.

Reporter Justin Post has been following this story at the Montana Standard.

Go Boom. A skeet shooting festival in early Butte features the Civil War cannon.

Photo courtesy of the World Museum of Mining