The Liberty Bell was on display around the Wilson Building for about thirty years before it went missing without a trace. (Courtesy of the D.C. Council)

Have you happened to have seen a 2,000-pound replica of the Liberty Bell lying around, perchance? No, not the huge one outside Union Station nor the replica stationed between the Treasury Building and the White House—though it is a twin of the latter.

“It sort of defies comprehension that something the size of a Liberty Bell that weighs 2,000 pounds and is 4 feet by 4 feet, or so, could be there one minute, well at one point, and then be gone,” says Josh Gibson, the D.C. Council’s public information officer and the mastermind before its colorful Twitter account.

The replica was last seen in 1979 and he’s on a quest to get it back, following in the footsteps of a couple of 1980’s-era D.C. government officials who also went searching for the missing monument and came up with nothing.

“My best guess would be that it got stuck someplace, not hidden. But it had to be moved and someone put it down somewhere and it got forgotten,” Gibson says.

In 1950, the federal government gave out life-size replicas of the Liberty Bell to D.C., along with every state and territory and the Treasury Department (that’s the one still out there). D.C.’s copy lived on the Wilson Building’s steps for a while before taking up residence in a small park in front of the building.

When Pennsylvania Avenue was being beautified around 1980, a number of statues were relocated for safekeeping. The area later reopened as what is now known as Freedom Plaza and two of the monuments came back (the statue of Ben Franklin outside of the Old Post Office Pavilion and the Temperance Fountain outside the National Archives), while a third was stashed away for safekeeping (Boss Shepard, who returned in 2005). No one has been able to figure out what exactly happened to Liberty Bell.

Gibson pulled up news stories that show it was in place as recently as April 2, 1979 and was missing by July 30, 1981. It corresponds exactly to the period when the Pennsylvania Avenue Development Corporation was doing the beautification work, so he doesn’t suspect something sinister.

He tracked down employees from the period, and while they all remember moving the three other statues, none recall anything about the Liberty Bell. Gibson found a staffer who has been employed by the city government for 46 years and they went searching all the sites where D.C. tends to stash large-scale stuff, but didn’t turn anything up.

Ever the detective, Gibson did research about the French foundry that made the bells. When he realized it was located just one town over from an already planned vacation spot, he even paid them a visit to learn more about the process of making a Liberty Bell replica (turns out, they still get the occasional order).

So far nothing. But it’s not Gibson’s first time chasing down a D.C. Council-related mystery—and he’s had his share of successes.

After then-Mayor Vincent Gray put out a call in 2010 for help in identifying a plaque featuring nearly 2,000 names (the shattered pieces of the sign were stowed away in a fifth floor closet at the John A. Wilson Building), Gibson cracked the puzzle six years later. Turns out, it honored District government employees who served in World War II.

Since going public earlier this week, he’s already gotten a bunch of leads. One person messaged to say there’s just such a bell at the Fort Lincoln Cemetery.

“I had to use all my willpower to not drive out to a cemetery at 10:30 at night,” Gibson says. They went first thing in the morning and “lo and behold there is a scale model replica of the Liberty Bell, made actually by the correct French foundry.”

But each of the ones that were made in the 1950’s had a small identification number inscribed on it, and the cemetery replica didn’t have one. The inscription on the Liberty Bell he’s searching for is “small, but it’s there,” Gibson says. “You have to know where to look.”