The discovery of a cannonball could answer questions about California's involvement in the civil war – long since thought lost to time.
Thousands of troops marched through California during the height of the American Civil War.
But specific details of their involvement in the early 18-60s was lost to time – but the cannonball's discovery in San Diego creek near Irvine gives researcher's something concrete to work from.
“It’s a real cannonball, it is really a live round,” historian Douglas Westfall said. “It is four inches in diameter, weighs about like a ten pound bag of sugar, so it is quite heavy.”
Experts at the lincoln memorial shrine in redlands believe it was dropped by union soldiers marching through orange county.
“We interviewed everybody that owned that land, going back to the 1940s,” Westfall said. “It was always just a cornfield. Prior to the Civil War, the only cannonballs that would have been used in California would have been during the Mexican-American War. The Mexicans never made cannonballs.”
But more research is yet to be done to establish it's precise history – and that's expected to take six months.
