Ok, you asked!Do tell!
In the early 20s the U.S. government shipped boatloads of German artillery to the U.S. for testing. After they were finished with it, it was offered as centerpieces of war memorials to various towns and cities around the country. The piece my guys found is a very rare 105mm gun; similar in appearance to the usual 77mm gun. From my internet research I could only find two other of the 105s in museum collections.
The gun was put on display somewhere in the city as a war memorial and over the years it somehow migrated to a scrap yard. When WW2 kicked off someone remembered the gun sitting in the scrap yard and had it repossessed and brought back to the city. The local VFW post refurbed it and put it back on display in one of the city parks. Pictures of the gun in 1943 show it to be complete in all aspects except the sight and breechblock.
throughout the 50s and 60s it sat in the park, open to any and all to climb all over it. I saw pictures taken in the 60s with boys sitting on the barrel up by the muzzle. Pieces started to disappear from it during this time. Apparently someone got hurt on the gun in the early 70s and it was surrounded by a fence to keep people off of it. Post Vietnam someone set the wood wheels on fire and by the early 80s the gun had disappeared.
What happened to it was that it was dragged back into the weeds and dropped there behind the park. Later on a block wall was built around it and it was forgotten.
Around 2015 or so some of my guys were looking for missing park equipment and stumbled across it. I got the electric utility people to lift the gun out with a crane and transport it to the public works yard where our welder fabricated a carriage for it so we could push it inside as it no longer had wheels. As far as I know it is still sitting there along with a WW2 MB Jeep from 1945. I couldn't get the city manager to spend the money to rehab it. Since it is still U.S. government property I offered to contact the appropriate agency to get it sent back but he didn't want to do that either. I imagine it will sit in that old garage for another 30 years until someone else stumbles on it!