Winchester Model 1873

The Winchester Model 1873 is an American lever-action repeating rifle manufactured by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company beginning in 1873, chambered for the .44-40 Winchester cartridge, which was also available in the contemporary Colt Single Action Army revolver, letting a rifle and sidearm share the same ammunition, a practical convenience widely valued by settlers and travelers of the era. Its tubular magazine and smooth lever action allowed a comparatively high rate of fire for a repeating rifle of its day, and the model became so closely associated with the settlement and folklore of the American West that it earned the popular nickname the Gun That Won the West, a phrase later used as the title of a 1950 Western film. Winchester produced the Model 1873 for roughly fifty years and hundreds of thousands of units, and it remains one of the most recognizable lever-action rifles in American firearms history, still manufactured today in reproduction form for collectors and cowboy action shooters.