An American Legend: The Wild West
Compiled by Valerie A. Peters
And since its beginnings in 1866, Winchester has sustained the romance
and legacy of its remarkable heritage as an American original. Winchester
firearms accompanied American settlers as they moved west to seek their fortunes
in a virgin land. Winchester's image became one with that of the cowboy, the
Indian, the lawman, the pioneer, the mesa, the mountains, the desert, and the
grandeur of the west. Small wonder that Winchester is called "The American
Legend." The famous horse and rider logo used by Winchester on its products
symbolizes that legacy.
The Winchester Repeating Arms Company produced the first firearm to bear its
name in 1866 - the Model 66. In 1873, the company began to expand its operations
to include increased ammunition manufacture. To coincide with the introduction
of its new Model 73, the company claimed it was "prepared to manufacture 250,000
cartridges per day, embracing every size and description of a quality superior
to anything heretofore offered." By 1875, cartridge capacity had been stepped up
to a million a day. The decision to expand ammunition production was one of the
major policy changes in the history of Winchester. It marked the first step
toward making the company one of the largest and best-known manufacturers of
ammunition in the world.
Smokeless powder entered the market in the 1890s. The adoption of smokeless
powder for ammunition was one of the major innovations affecting the entire
history of firearms, and started a new phase in the development of guns and
ammunition. Winchester began to produce smokeless cartridges, but did not reduce
its offerings of black powder shotshells because, as was the case with metallic
ammunition, smokeless powder did not eliminate the demand for black-powder
loads.
Winchester owes its fame to many sources. However, one man did much to spread
the fame of the Winchester firearm more than any other -- Buffalo Bill. While
Buffalo Bill was never employed as a shooter by Winchester to publicize the
company's products, he directly and indirectly did much to increase the
company's exposure. As the hero of fictionalized Western dime novels, he was
often armed by the authors with a Winchester rifle in his fights with the
Indians and the bad guys. In the famous Wild West Show, he and his fellow
marksmen, including Annie Oakley, used Winchester rifles and ammunition. The
Winchester Repeating Arms Company did not fail to publicize the fact that its
products were the choice of Buffalo Bill and his fellow star performers.
Theodore Roosevelt was another one of the famous folks that used Winchester
products and publicized that fact.
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