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→“The Gun That Won The West” in Modern Culture
==“The Gun That Won The West” in Modern Culture==
The Model 1873 remained in production until 1919, the same year the phrase "the gun that won the West" appeared for the first time. <ref>Haar, Dan, ”Gun That Won The West: Two Claim Bragging Rights,” ‘’’’Hartford Courant’’’’''Hartford Courant'', 2016</ref> It was created by a copywriter for a Winchester magazine advertisement but it did not take long for moviemakers to adopt it. Randolph Scott starred in Colt .45 and the gun was at the center of every Western shootout, especially the fast-draw duel, a wholly Hollywood creation, as it staked a claim to being that victorious gun. By the 1960s, when Houston was awarded an expansion major league baseball team, the club adopted the nickname “Colt 45s.”
No gunfight ever erupted between the Colt and Winchester companies, still both in an altered existence in Connecticut, for bragging rights over the claim to be the one gun to have "won the West." America has created no myth larger than the "Old West" so there is plenty of shoulder room for the two to co-exist: the Colt revolver as the weapon of the lawman cleaning up a frontier town and the Winchester rifle taming the frontier.
