Editorial: Losing the gun that won the West

Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

The gun that won the West has lost its factory. The U.S. Repeating Arms factory in Connecticut that manufactured Winchester rifles closes its doors March 31, taking with it the West's most famous rifle.

The traditional Winchester rifles will be discontinued -- including the lever-action Model 94 that became an American icon and the preferred saddle-gun of the 19th century. The only guns that will bear the Winchester name in the future will be more modern, higher-priced models made in Japan, Portugal and Belgium, a spokesman for Herstal Group told the Associated Press last week. Herstal Group owns U.S. Repeating Arms and the rights to the Winchester name.

The Duke must be spinning in his grave. The Winchester rifle was a staple for actor John Wayne, whose bronze, 10-foot-tall likeness stands in the lobby of the soon-to-close New Haven, Conn., plant. It's the gun Chuck Connors toted in his role as Lucas McCain on "The Rifleman" television series. And it's the rifle that President Theodore Roosevelt used on his 1909 African safari.

The New Haven plant opened in 1856 as the New Haven Arms Company and was renamed the Winchester Repeating Arms Company when purchased by Oliver Winchester in 1866. The reliability of the Winchester 1873 model made it a household term decades before Jimmy Stewart immortalized the gun in the 1950 film, "Winchester '73." Those who traveled West most often carried a Winchester.

But generations of changing and softening firearms market took their toll. Even the $50 million in city and state incentives and loans U.S. Repeating Arms has received since 1993 couldn't save the factory. And though the new guns will say "Winchester" on them, many say it just won't be the same.

"It would be like Chevrolet being made in Japan or China," one firearms historian told the AP. "Winchester is an American legend."

A legend that will live longer than the gun that inspired it.