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Why Did Old West Bandits Carry Remington Revolvers?
Colt, Winchester and Sharps head the list of gun manufacturers who developed iconic firearms during the shoot ’em up period of the Old West. But there is one other name that should not be buried in...
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Smith & Wesson’s Model No. 3 Six-Shooter: An Innovative American Classic
One of the few positive side effects of the four years of bloody battle during the U.S. Civil War was that the massive demand for guns and improvements in them created the greatest technological...
View ArticleWild West Book Review: The Last Gunfight
The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—And How It Changed the American West by Jeff Guinn, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2011, $27. This book should have been written...
View ArticleOld West Gun Owners Knew to Keep Their Bores Clean and Powder Dry
Tending one’s gun was a ritual now rarely depicted on-screen. With the demise of Wild West shows during the Great Depression, Western movies— melodrama and all—have been about the only way to see the...
View ArticleWinchester’s ‘One of One Thousand’ Seemed Like a Great Ad Campaign
But it made the standard rifles look bad to potential buyers. By the mid-1870s Oliver Winchester’s newfangled lever action repeating rifles—the Henry and Models 1866 and 1873— were well on their way to...
View ArticleColts That Weren’t: Some Were Legal, Most Were Forgeries
Many copies saw use in the Mexican revolutions. When I was buying antique guns in Mexico during the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, I hauled dozens of old, well-worn copies and forgeries of Colt single-action...
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The Mysterious Morgan Earp
.image-13782250 { max-height: 100%; --left: 47.32%; --top: 31.29%; } On the night of March 18, 1882, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory, Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holliday attended a play at...
View ArticleWestern Movies Created The Myth of ‘Fanning’
Old West gunfighters hardly ever practiced the technique. During the 1950s Hollywood Western movie craze, fast drawing and rapid firing of several shots by “fanning” a six-shooter became a skill used...
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The Model 1878 Colt Was a Double Action That Saw Limited Action in the Wild West
When Sam Colt invented the first American revolver that worked when it was supposed to, one of the keys to its success was that its single-action, cap-and-ball mechanism had only four moving parts....
View ArticleGatling Guns Generated Fearsome Fire But Seldom Dealt Death in the West
Their mere presence was enough to scare off most challengers. Gatling gun. The name is nearly as recognizable to Old West aficionados as Colt, Winchester, Remington or Smith & Wesson, and it...
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Virgil Earp: In a Brother’s Shadow
.image-13782236 { max-height: 100%; --left: 37.96%; --top: 36.54%; } “People like to cling to their legends and myths,” historian Barry Clifford writes in his 2002 book The Lost Fleet. “‘History,’...
View ArticleDaniel Moore Challenged the Big Boys With a Number of Reliable Handguns
His seven-shooter was popular but short-lived. Stories and anecdotes about Old West gunplay almost always mention one of the big three manufacturers— Colt, Remington or Smith & Wesson. But largely...
View ArticleSmith & Wesson’s Model No. 2 Was the First Large-Caliber Cartridge Revolver
The No. 1 just didn’t have enough firepower to suit most shooters. Although Colt revolvers were the most commonly used handguns during the Civil War and in the Old West, fledgling gunsmiths Horace...
View ArticleCalifornia Bear Guns Helped Exterminate the Grizzly
State gunsmiths made rifles for killing the big beasts. On September 2, 1769, a small expedition of leatherjacket soldiers, missionaries and muleteers killed a large-but-lean grizzly bear on the shore...
View ArticleBat Masterson’s Colt Has Celebrity Appeal
The legendary lawman ordered it. Ask any Old West aficionado to name the most legendary lawmen of the Old West, and Bat Masterson will always be mentioned. Ask the aficionado if he has ever seen a Colt...
View ArticleChallenge Repeated: The 1881 Marlin Rifle
Penetrating the Winchester West. Compared to the revolvers and repeating rifles made by the Big Four of U.S. gunmakers—Colt, Smith & Wesson, Remington and Winchester—the Marlin lever-action...
View ArticleUtah Uncovered: A Tale of Three Photos
A pioneer railroad man, an old mountain man and a prominent Indian chief are featured in images taken 140 years ago in Utah Territory. In the mid-1970s, in my quest to find original photos of the Old...
View ArticleRingo Death a Mystery, But Not So His Colt
The .45 is still very much alive. “John Ringgold, one of the best known men in southeastern Arizona, was found dead in Morse’s canyon, in the Chiricahua mountains last Friday [July 14],” Tucson’s...
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Colt’s Big Model 1898 Was a Double-Action Hit
Sam Colt did not invent the revolver. But what he did invent was the first practical revolver mechanism that could be mass-produced with enough quality that all the parts were interchangeable with any...
View ArticleRemington cap-and-ball revolvers
Compared to other infamous stagecoach holdups of the Wild West, the robbery of a southbound stage near Sacramento, California, in 1902 was rather tame. Although not one of those blood-and-thunder...
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