It was recently discovered that the artifact that Steve Martin of Atascosa County had been keeping on his desk was a still-active artillery shell from a Civil War Parrott rifle.
Atascosa County Sheriff’s OfficeSteve Martin thought that his relic was nothing more than a “dummy bomb” — but it could have exploded at any moment.
When Steve Martin of Atascosa County, Texas recently went to his desk on an ordinary July morning, it wasn’t to carry out a routine office task.
It was to determine if his paperweight — a Civil War-era artifact given to him by his son — was, in fact, an active explosive that had gone undetonated for 150 years.
The Discovery Of An Active Explosive That Had Been Sitting On A Texas Man’s Desk For Years
Martin’s son, Jarrett, stumbled upon the artillery shell when he went fishing in the Guadalupe River several years ago. He gave the artifact to his dad, who decided to use it as a paperweight.
Martin kept this 19th-century explosive, a large cylindrical object that weighed roughly 20 pounds, on his desk for years, and it became a conversation piece for guests visiting his office.
“Everybody that comes in there wants to pick it up, and look at it, and handle it,” Martin told KABB. “We all thought, ‘Well, it’s some kind of dummy bomb.’”
Atascosa County Sheriff’s OfficeAfter a truck driver with military training told Martin that the artifact might be an active explosive, he called the authorities.
But Martin’s perception of the shell changed one day last month when he was going over a trucking schedule and making small talk with a driver. The man, who had a military background, said that the paperweight did not look like a fake, but instead like a live explosive.
“He said that could really be live ordnance,” Martin told KENS 5. “He said, I have military training, and that really looks like it could be the real deal.”
Following the driver’s guidance, Martin called the Atascosa County Sheriff’s Office, explaining that he suspected he had an active explosive on his desk. Explosive disposal experts from Lackland Air Force Base came to Martin’s house, along with a team of emergency medical professionals, according to a statement from the Sheriff’s Office.
The experts came to the same verdict as the truck driver: The artifact was, in fact, a live Parrott round, an artillery shell used during the Civil War.
Library of CongressBomb experts determined the artifact to be a live artillery shell made for a Parrott rifle.
“Now I’m thinking, ‘Well, the thing’s making a dummy out of me, right? Who’s the dummy here?’ All this time, I’d had that antique bomb there that potentially could have exploded,” Martin told KENS 5.
Active Explosives From Past Wars Are Still Being Found Around The World Today
The explosive was made for a Parrott rifle, a muzzle-loading cannon invented by Robert Parker Parrott in 1860. The gun, which was used extensively by the Union Army, was easily recognizable on the Civil War battlefield thanks to the reinforcing band of iron wrapped around its bottom.
After the discovery of the Parrott round, the bomb squad brought the shell to an explosives range at Camp Bullis, a military training site north of San Antonio. The team then safely detonated the shell.
“It’s amazing that those things are still turning up almost 200 years later. People stumble across ordnance from time to time, but usually it’s not anywhere near as old as that one was,” Eric Kaiser, deputy chief at the Sheriff’s Office, told KENS 5.
Public DomainThe Parrott rifle was invented by Robert Parker Parrott in 1860.
While still-active explosives from the Civil War are indeed rare, they are discovered on occasion.
In 2023, for instance, an archaeologist working at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania unearthed a ten-pound Civil War-era artillery shell buried about 20 inches underground. The archaeologist had been searching the site with a metal detector when he stumbled upon this active explosive. Experts then safely detonated the shell in a secluded area of the site.
Active explosives from World War II are found more often, especially in Europe. In 2017, a man in Slovenia found a 550-pound unexploded American bomb from World War II with his metal detector while playing a treasure hunting game with his kids, causing 400 people in his neighborhood to take part in an evacuation.
In Slovenia, as well, in 2022, wildfires spreading across the country ignited unexploded ordnance from World War I sitting in the country’s forests.
So, while Martin was disappointed that the bomb team was unable to preserve his treasured artifact, he said he certainly understands the danger of active explosives, and will be more careful in the future.
“If somebody hands you something,” he told KENS 5, “it might be a hot potato.”
After reading about the active Civil War explosive used as a paperweight for years, look through these photos of the most haunting Civil War scenes. Then, read about how a berry picker in Poland stumbled upon remnants of a World War II plane.