Back in 1873, when Colt first introduced the Peacemaker, it sold for a whopping $17.50! That was nearly a month’s wages for a laborer. You could...
Good As Gold
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Firearms
The Rifleman’s Rifle Returns
Armed only with a Winchester rifle, a lone, lanky figure walks resolutely down a dusty frontier street. Suddenly, with almost machine gun-like...
The Most Famous Rifle of the Old West
Thanks largely to its use on the American frontier, the slab-sided 1873 Winchester lever-action rifle has become an icon of the Wild West. The 1873...
The Firearms Legacy of Will Hoffeld
Back in the good ol’ days of the 1960s and ’70s, I frequented a magical, little shop in Los Angeles, California, called the Eagle’s Nest. Stuffed...
Bianchi Celebrates
It was 1958. TV Westerns reigned as king of the small screen, with programs debuting such as The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca, Lawman and MacKenzie’s...
Sheriff’s Sale
“Quien es?” asked the lone figure standing in the dim-lit doorway. Instantly, two shots rang out from a darkened room, ending the life of one of the...
Birth of a Breed
The day before the fall of the Alamo, in which Santa Anna and his soldiers crushed the rebellion in Texas, Samuel Colt formed the Patent Arms Mfg....
The Frontiersman’s Mexican Loop Holster
"Before leaving the train, I had prudently strapped to my waist a new (how distressingly new) Colt’s six-shooter, that looked and felt a yard long...
Here Comes the Cavalry
Boots and saddle troopers, did you know that several firearms companies are producing replicas of the 1873 cavalry Peacemaker? Military Colt copies...
Big Bend Mystery Under the Sands
How long it had lain in the West Texas desert, no one knew. It was 1972, and the firearm looked as if it had been undisturbed for at least a...
NRA’s Cowboy Celebration
“When fact becomes legend, print the legend!” So goes the words of the great film director, John Ford, when asked about portraying truth in his...
Clean Shots
The most successful gunfighters in the Old West were firm believers in maintaining their firearms. As the story goes, handsome, homicidal John...