Coltsville National Historical Park!

What Is Coltsville National Historical Park?

This park-in-the-making preserves the mansion and blue-domed firearm factory of Samuel Colt!

What Makes It Historical?

Samuel Colt did not invent the revolver, which had a prototype as early as the 1400s CE, but that type of firearm was expensive, cumbersome, and not worth the effort for most folks. It was a tough market for an aspiring inventor to tackle, but at the age of 15, he carved his first prototype out of wood on a ship to Calcutta, then raised funds to build more revolvers by demonstrating, of all things, nitrous oxide (laughing gas)! Enlisting the help of gunsmiths in Baltimore, Mr. Colt filed his first patent in the UK in 1835, then in the US on February 25, 1836! His first firearm business, Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, went live nine days later on March 5th!

The Paterson factory was a flop! The market was still in muskets, and even worse, the Militia Act of 1808 banned state militias from buying weapons that were considered experimental! This first big endeavor folded in 1843, putting Mr. Colt onto other projects, like underwater mines and manufacturing waterproof cable for Samuel Morse’s Transatlantic telegraph project! But he’d developed a solid strategy in Paterson that just needed buyers: an assembly line using interchangeable parts to assemble his revolvers!

Four years later, Captain Samuel Walker (the original Walker, Texas Ranger), who’d seen the revolvers in use during the Seminole War, ordered 1,000 of them for use in the Mexican-American War, with a few adjustments. This new model, the Colt Walker, gave Mr. Colt the funds to build the world’s largest private armory factory, equipped with state-of-the-art lighting, ventilation, and gas power. He even hired Octavius Jordan to install a Russian-inspired, blue onion dome at the top! Around his factory, he built a town called Coltsville, modeled after Potsdam to attract skilled Bavarian workers like engraver, Gustave Young, and installed a community center, beer hall, and yards where they could let off steam! 26 years later, after Mr. Colt had died and Colt’s Patent Manufacturing Company had burned and been rebuilt by his wife, Elizabeth, this factory produced the Colt brand’s signature creation, the M1873 “Peacemaker.” This revolver was the U.S. Army’s standard-issue revolver from 1873 until 1892, taking land from folks like Crazy Horse and Geronimo six rounds at a time.

How Can I #HelpTheHelpers?

Volunteer at Coltsville National Historical Park!
Be a responsible visitor! Remember the old adages: Pack out what you pack in! Take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints!