The Wild West of Yester-Year
The Colt Walker 1847
By Rachel Kovaciny
If you’ve ever watched The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), or even just the movie posters for the film, you’ve seen a splendid pair of Colt Walker 1847 pistols in action. Clint Eastwood brandishes a pair of these long-barreled handguns on the poster and wreaks his vengeance with them throughout the film. It makes sense that Josey Wales would have acquired this particular weapon, since he was a Confederate living in Missouri. The Colt Walker 1847 was created for the Texas Rangers, and Texas was part of the Confederacy, so having Josey Wales carry these makes historical sense. It also makes him look extremely cool, because the extra long barrels attract the audience’s gaze, and their formidable firepower makes Josey Wales a fearsome adversary within the story.
The Colt Walker 1847 came to exist because Captain Samuel
Hamilton Walker wanted a better handgun for the men serving
under him. It was 1846, and he was an officer in the Texas
Rangers as well as in the United States Mounted Rifles. Both
the Rangers and the U.S. Military were engaged in the
Mexican-American War, and they needed better close-range
weapons. Captain Walker and his fellow Texas Rangers were
pleased with the five-shot Colt Paterson revolver many of
them carried, but Walker came up with a list of improvements
he hoped could be implemented. So, he traveled to New York
City to meet with Samuel Colt and discuss these
improvements. The trouble was,
Colt had actually closed his firearms manufacturing company
because it wasn't turning a profit. However, he thought
Captain Walker's improvements would definitely make a
superior firearm. Walker wanted a handgun that would provide
a lot of power for close-range shooting, being powerful
enough to kill an enemy up to 100 yards away. He wanted Colt
to add a sixth shot. And Walker made several suggestions for
ways to make the pistol easier and faster to reload.
Colt hired Eli Whitney, Jr., to help design this new pistol.
Captain Walker was so pleased with the results, the Republic
of Texas ordered one thousand of the pistols. This order
made Colt's Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company
economically viable, and the popularity of the pistol led to
more and more innovations for Samuel Colt. When he died in
1862, he was one of the richest men in the country.
The Colt Walker 1847 model was a large
and impressive weapon. When unloaded, it weighed 4.5 pounds.
Its barrel alone was 9 inches long, and it fired a .44
caliber bullet. Unlike later Old West pistols that used
cartridges containing bullets, this firearm used .44 caliber
lead balls that were propelled by a charge of black powder.
This particular pistol used almost twice as much powder for
each shot as most handguns, which is what gave it such
deadly power. In fact, this pistol is considered one of the
most powerful handguns ever issued by the American military.
This size and weight made this pistol somewhat unwieldy,
especially for soldiers on foot. But the Colt Walker proved
to be an especially effective weapon for mounted troops, and
it quickly became popular. Captain Walker and many of his
fellow Texas Rangers carried the Colt Walker into battle
during the Mexican-American War in 1847. When Walker was
killed by a sniper's bullet later that same year, he was
armed with his namesake pistols.
The Colt Walker had some drawbacks. If you didn't fill the
cylinders with powder properly, it would either misfire,
burst the cylinder itself, or even cause the whole pistol to
explode. Almost a third of the pistols were returned damaged
to the manufacturer for repair. But once a soldier or Ranger
got used to how to load the pistol properly, it became a
favorite weapon for most. And it led to Samuel Colt creating
a number of other popular handguns that helped to tame the
American West. One of Colt's most
important contributions to firearm manufacturing was the use
of interchangeable parts. If part of a pistol broke, you
could replace that part, you needn’t replace the entire
weapon. The use of standardized parts also meant that Colt
could use an assembly line to produce the weapons—the Colt's
Patent Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company was one of the first
to use an assembly line for mass manufacturing.
Only 1,100 of the 1847 Colt Walker model were manufactured.
One thousand of those went to the Texas Rangers, and the
additional one hundred were sold to private citizens.
Because fewer than 200 of these are still known to exist,
they are now very valuable. According to the America's 1st
Freedom magazine issue of July 2018, the only known Model
1847 Colt Walker pistol to still have its original case was
sold by Rock Island Auction for $1.84 million. It holds the
record for being the most expensive single firearm ever
auctioned!
If you’d like to find out for yourself what Josey Wales
experienced when using this particular firearm, there are
replicas available that don’t have the same explosive
drawbacks the originals could experience. ♦