The howitzer was a bronze smoothbore 12-pounder weapon, optimized for firing explosive shells as well as spherical case and canister.

Because of this, and its ease of disassembly, it did not require roads for transportation making it well suited to Indian fighting and mountain warfare.

The first 13 units of this weapon were manufactured in 1837 at the U.S. Watervliet Arsenal in Troy, New York; one of these was carried on John C. Frémont's Second Expedition to explore and map the Oregon Trail in 1843–1844.

Frémont had to abandon the howitzer in late January 1843 in a canyon on the east side of Sonora Pass, in what is now a part of Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Burcham Flat, when exhaustion of the expedition's food supplies forced a risky decision to make a winter crossing of the Sierra Nevada to reach Sutter's Fort near Sacramento, California.

These parts have been authenticated by U.S. Army historian Lieutenant Colonel Paul R. Rosewitz as belonging to a pre-Civil War model M1841, and from the location of the find, could only have come from the Fremont Second Expedition howitzer.