When Colorado rancher Mason Thurlow started digging a new fence line on his 40-acre property outside Pueblo, he expected nothing more exciting than rocks, roots, and maybe an old horseshoe. What he didn’t expect—what he still can’t fully explain—was the Cold War-era device he struck with his post-hole digger.
“I thought it was just another chunk of scrap metal,” Mason told us, leaning back in a weathered lawn chair behind his barn. “But when I dug it out, it wasn’t rusted junk. It looked… intentional.”
What he uncovered was a sealed metal cylinder the length of a forearm, stamped with faded numbers and the unmistakable yellow-and-black Civil Defense emblem. Inside, cushioned in disintegrating insulation, was a CD V-717 Radiological Survey Meter—the kind used in fallout shelters during the 1960s.
And according to Mason?
It still works.
“I couldn’t believe it. The needle actually moved.”
After bringing it to his workshop, Mason carefully brushed off the dust and flipped the toggle switch.
“It hummed,” he said, eyes widening as he recalled the moment. “Like it had been waiting down there this whole time.”
His biggest shock came when he carried the device near his well house.
“The needle lifted,” Mason said, demonstrating a tiny upward flick with his finger. “I’m not saying my well is contaminated. I’m not saying it’s radiation. But it reacted to something. And that means something is down there.”
Neighbors Think He’s Overreacting
Local ranchers who know Mason aren’t convinced.
“Old meters like that go nuts if you breathe on them wrong,” said one neighbor who asked not to be named. “But Mason? He’s convinced it’s pointing to a Cold War secret government forgot to mention.”
Mason shrugs off the skepticism.
“Look, I’m not claiming the Russians tunneled under my ranch. But this thing wouldn’t have been buried here by accident. Someone put it there on purpose. Someone covered it up.”
He taps the metal housing with the same faint respect one might show an old relic from a battlefield.
“I don’t think the folks who buried it expected anyone to find it.”
A Hidden History Under the Plains
Eastern Colorado is dotted with remnants of the Cold War—abandoned silos, forgotten bunkers, and sealed-off access shafts. But a working radiological survey meter buried three feet deep is not exactly standard.
Mason believes it may have belonged to a Civil Defense volunteer group active in the area during the 1960s.
“They trained people out here,” he said. “Taught them how to monitor fallout in case Denver got hit. Maybe one of them buried backup gear. Maybe they never got around to digging it back up.”
He pauses, then adds:
“Or maybe they buried it because they didn’t want someone else to.”
What He Plans to Do With It
Right now, Mason keeps the device in his workshop, perched on a shelf above a dusty shortwave radio and a jar of mismatched screws. He turns it on once a day—“just to check,” he says.
“I’m not a conspiracy guy,” Mason insists. “I’m just a rancher who found something strange on his own land. And I want to know why it was there.”
He says the discovery has already changed the way he sees his property.
“I always thought of this land as mine,” he said. “Now I’m wondering who used it before me, and what they were preparing for.”
Is the Device Really Working?
Experts might dismiss Mason’s findings as coincidence or meter malfunction. But whether the device is precisely calibrated or hopelessly outdated doesn’t matter to him.
“It’s a piece of history,” he says. “A piece someone went out of their way to hide.”
And if his story is true—if a working piece of Cold War technology really was buried beneath a quiet Colorado ranch for half a century—then one thing’s for sure:
Some relics don’t stay buried forever.