Which rifle and handgun "won the west"?

Shotguns "Won the West"

What won the 60's T.V. Western and what was common on the American frontier in the late nineteenth century overlapped only so much. The first thing to understand is that both the Colt and the Winchester were expensive. The television western's iconic character was the drifting saddle bum going from town to town, dispensing justice, standing up for what was right, and winning the hearts of all the beautiful women. He was poor, owning little more than his horse, a saddle, a Winchester, and one or two Colts. Throw in a coffeepot, a blanket, and an expensive hat, and that was about it.

Compared to actual standards of the day, such a man would be quite wealthy. They carried everything available. Flintlock Kentucky rifles converted to percussion were still in use up in the twentieth century.

When Colt stopped producing the great single action in the 1930's, it wasn't so much because the taste of the American shooter had turned to the double actions and the semiautos, it was because the American public was so cash strapped they couldn't afford to buy them. When Colt cleaned out their inventory to sell the last of their single actions to England at the beginning of World War II, they were shipping single actions made as far back as 1929 that they couldn't sell.

The scene in the old Westerns where our hero pushes the batwing doors back on the room and surveys the patrons to see every man in the room openly carrying a single action Colt probably never happened.

Lever actions and the Colt Peacemaker were invented after the west was won. Shotguns won the west. Along with muzzle loading rifles.

I would say that the gun that won the West was probably a 50 caliber Buffalo rifle. That's certainly the rifle that defeated the Plains Indians

Cap and ball revolvers are period correct for post civil war sidearms.
If you're not familiar with cap n ball, they can be addictive, fun, and outstanding accuracy.
If you like to fiddle with guns , clean them, snd shoot your own reloads.....you gotta try it.

If you dont want the fuss and messy cleaning of BP guns, then this colt SAA clone might suit.
Mine is a uberti el patron in .45 colt. They can be had around the $400 mark. There are many models to choose from.....and they are quality guns, do NOT be fooled by that.

For the levergun, Google up an uberti 1866 yellowboy.

I was going to say the Civil War surplus musket, single and side by side shotguns because they were cheap and more readily available to settlers pushing westward after the war. You don't see them as much as you see levers and revolvers because those guns got worked to death doing the necessary things, while the pricier weapons were better cared for and thus survived.

The West was not won over night. It was an on going process that didn't end until the late 1800's or early 1900's depending on who you talk to.
Men specking adventure, fortune, solitude and sometimes fame headed west. These men armed themselves with the best guns they could afford.
Now depending on the time frame of the western expansion different guns were more popular.
You also have to know what was going on in the US during the time frame. After the Civil War the American public was well armed and the guns that were used on the battle fields of the east started making their way west.
By 1871 Colt was converting 1860 and 1851 revolvers to fire cartridges. They remained popular even after the Colt 1873 (Peace Maker) came out. this is due to conversion models costing $5.00 to $6.00, while the Peacemaker cost $15.00.
In most western movies you will see Winchester 1892 carbines, but you must remember that the Winchester 1892 did not come out until close to the end of the wild west days. The 1892 was a scaled down version of the Winchester 1886 lever action. Winchester offered Browning $15000 if he could have a completed rifle in two months. Browning said the price would be $20000 and would have it done in a month.
But lets not forget the Henry rifle or the Winchester 1866. Both fine rifles in their day.
You have right around 30 years of history where the West was wild. Pick a time in that history and research the guns of that time frame. Or pick a famous person, Lawman, or Outlaw, and see what guns they favored.
We live in a great time where there are many replicas of old guns from the west that we can buy.

Trunk Monkey said:

I would say that the gun that won the West was probably a 50 caliber Buffalo rifle. That's certainly the rifle that defeated the Plains Indians

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Indeed. The slaughter of the buffalo herds drove the nomadic plains Indians to the point of starvation and eventual subjugation by the Government.

Winchester '73? Well it was a good movie.

While firearms were instramental, at the end of the day, twas the boring ol plow that actually settled "the west" enabling people to grow food to survive.

while back I visited what had been a notorious old Western mining town and among the artifacts there were numerous 1851 and 1860 Colts.
They probably settled a lot of disputes but I doubt they "won" anything regarding the domestication of the West.
Shotguns OTOH were a popular choice among settlers, guards and lawmen.

Spencers, Trapdoors, muzzleloaders, cap and ball revolvers, and shotguns.

P5 Guy said:

Winchester '73? Well it was a good movie.

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So was Valdez is Coming.

BUT it is only a movie!

Mostly surplus Civil War firearms including muskets, reamed out musket shotguns and percussion revolvers. I love seeing movies where the actors are using 1873 Colts and Trapdoors in the War between the states scenarios. Just watched Going to Texas and there were almost exclusively flintlocks....rightly so as it was in the 1830s.

I forgot to add, as Gunny said, cap and ball revolvers, some converted, some not, also were more common, when seen at all, along with the 19th century version of the Saturday Night Special, the cheaply made bulldog revolvers in varying calibers. At the Pioneer Museum in Salt Lake, there's a collection of those pistols on display, with only one or two SAAs, if memory serves me.
Another fallacy of history were the fancy gunbelts the TV and movie cowboys all sported. When holsters were seen, they were plain, unassuming affairs, again, based on what survived to be put on display. Most times, those who had pistols tended to pocket them or stick them in their pants, gangster-style. Most western towns had pretty draconian gun control laws that forbade open carry, especially among the transient cowpokes who came through looking for R&R.

Regardless of which "won" the west, my favorite western "style" guns (and I own some) are 1873 Peacemakers (I like the Uberti based clones) and 1892 lever actions.

An old Sacramento Bee article called the silver mining town of Bodie, California "Bad Shot Gulch." There seem to have been a lot of shootouts but few casualties. One altercation had a lot of shots fired but the only loss was the saloon piano player's cigar. This may be due to the reporter observing that "scabbarded Army and Navy revolvers are seldom seen, the usual weapon is a Bulldog revolver in a leather or canvas lined coat pocket."

My paternal grandfather was born in 1859, married my grandmother in 1892. They raised 13 kids on a ranch in northern New Mexico. The only firearm on the ranch was a shotgun.

If you are talking about winning the West from the Indians, it wasn’t guns but European contagious diseases like smallpox, measles, etc. that killed about 80-90% of them. If you are talking about winning the West from Mexico, it was single shot percussion rifles and pistols. Colt’s Paterson 1836 revolver wasn’t involved at the Alamo or San Jacinto.

Edit: Sorry I sound like a killjoy, not intended. The thousands of Colt 1851 and 1860 percussion revolvers that were used in the Civil War were common in the post-war western territories. The lever action 1873 Winchesters with their dramatic increase in firepower had to be appealing. I can’t immediately find production figures by year. The leftover Civil War single shots had to outnumber the new lever guns for a while.

Whenever a technologically superior society encounters a technologically inferior society, the superior society wipes out the inferior society. The American Indians could not compete in terms of population, technology, exploitation of resources, food, energy, etc, and the weight of a modern industrial society ground them into the dirt and took their land and only by the barest of margins, did any survive.

It is called survival of the fittest and that is why "we" won the west. It is not fair, it is not just, but it happened before and will happen again.

In so far as firearms, Western settlers took what they could afford. Check out the average salaries at the time and the prices of firearms, and decide if you were there, if you wanted to eat, or buy a gun. There were lots of hungry people living in brush structures with the gaps filled with mud.

By the way, the Spanish conquered the West long before the Anglo's got out there. They did it with sword, lance, and pike. This Western history is pretty much ignored because it does not have the drama needed for exciting Cowboy and Indian movies.

Quarai mission ruins, New Mexico, built 1632

Just about every answer above is correct in one context or another.
Colt revolvers were there, even the Single Action Army. But let's not forget Merwin Hulberts, Remingtons, Smith and Wesson. There were guns out there the names of which are forgotten today. A good book about GUNS OF THE OLD WEST would be enormously helpful.
Punch it into Amazon.Com search engine.


In terms of what is available on the repro market, there are various front stuffer rifles. In handguns, various single shot by Pedersoli. Uberti and Pietta make nice revolvers. The Colt 1848/9 was a small .31 caliber that was enormous during the gold rush. Uberti makes a few variations. Also, percussion revolvers as well as cartridge revolvers are available, Colt, Remington.
Unfortunatly, lesser known ones arenot, even though they were there.

The Henry rifle, it's descendant the 1866, the 1873, 1876....they are made by Uberti. I know of 2 companies making 1886.
If you want unusual ones, Colt made a pump rifle called "Lightning" in small numbers and a lever action called the Colt-Burgess 1883, also in small numbers, but Uberti makes them.

It's all up to you, what you want and can afford.

Budget. Not exactly the frontier, but there were several mysteries written about a guy in New Orleans who snooped around but was too broke to be called a private detective. He operated on a shoestring and his weapon was an Iver Johnson .32.