A Laramie County family has recovered from the shellshock of finding a cannonball buried in their backyard.
There was a leak in the well on the Johnsons’ property in Laramie County. As the contractor they hired to fix it was digging into the ground, Shamayam Coleman noticed something odd half-buried nearby.
“It was sticking out of the ground on the path leading to my mother’s house,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “I didn't know what it was, but it looked like it could have been an ordinance.”
When Coleman told her mother, Nina Johnson, she “freaked out.”
“I googled pictures of cannonballs, and it looked like a cannonball to me, so I called the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department,” Johnson said.
Members of the Cheyenne Police Bomb Squad/ Laramie County Sheriff’s Office joint explosive ordinance disposal unit (EOD) came ready to dispose of the ordinance. Fortunately, their full skills weren’t needed.
“It was solid inside, so they decided not to detonate it,” Johnson said.
Always A Threat
Whenever there’s a suspicious and possibly explosive item discovered, law enforcement agencies don’t take any chances.
They deploy whatever and whoever’s needed to assess the situation and safely dispose of the object, whether it’s a suspected explosive ordinance, a decoy, or just an unexpectedly excavated training device.
Cannonballs might seem inert, but they can still be deadly after centuries underground. In 2006, a Virginia man was killed by a 75-pound Civil War-era naval cannonball.
That’s one of the hits Johnson found when she searched for cannonballs online. Recognizing the potential danger, she didn’t take any chances.
“I don’t want a cannonball,” she said. “I found the number, and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office responded.”
First, the deputies used a bomb-sniffing canine to assess the situation.
The canine would alert them if there was any gunpowder or chemicals, indicating that the cannonball might be explosive.
Most people think of cannonballs as solid projectiles, but some Civil War-era round shot was designed to carry explosive charges with complex fuses.
Naval ordinance was designed to be waterproof, so it could theoretically still explode after being buried underground for a century.
Cheyenne isn’t a naval hub, but it does have a military history going back to the mid-1800s. However, Johnson and Coleman still don’t have an explanation for why there was a cannonball on their land.
“I don’t think this was a location, historically, for the kind of cannonballs that had explosives in them,” Coleman said. “Some people think it was like a steel mill ball or railroad bearing, but I'm not an expert in that.”
Johnson said the EOD team told her the cannonball was the type used for “destroying buildings or walls,” but didn’t have an explanation for why it was buried on her property.
No Harm, No Foul
After the bomb-sniffing canine made a pass at the cannonball, the EOD team used a machine to X-ray it. They discovered there was nothing to be concerned about.
“They determined that it was solid on the inside, and therefore it wouldn't detonate it or anything like that,” Johnson said.
So, the EOD team dug up the cannonball, and that was that. Johnson let them take it as a strange souvenir.
“They wanted it, and it’s in their line of work, so I let them take it with them,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine what my daughter was going to do with a cannonball.”
Coleman wished her mother had consulted with her before giving the cannonball away.
“I wanted the cannonball, so my friends told me I should get a metal detector and start finding things,” she said. “We haven’t lived here very long, so who knows what else we’ll find.”
Contact Andrew Rossi at andrew@cowboystatedaily.com
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
