Peacemaker, Model P, Frontier Six-Shooter: The Colt That Named the West

One revolver, many names

Ask five collectors what to call it and you might get five answers. Single Action Army. SAA. Model 1873. Peacemaker. Model P. Frontier Six-Shooter. Six-gun. They are all, more or less, the same revolver.

That pile of names is not confusion; it's a record. The Army had its name, Colt's salesmen had theirs, and the people who carried it had a few more. Following the names is a tidy way to follow the gun.

The Army name: Single Action Army

Colt's engineers William Mason and Charles Brinckerhoff Richards designed the revolver for the U.S. government's 1872 service revolver trials. The timing was not an accident. For years, the Rollin White patent had kept American makers other than Smith & Wesson from building revolvers with cylinders bored straight through for metallic cartridges. That patent expired in 1869, and Colt was free to build a true cartridge revolver of its own.

The Army adopted the gun in 1873 as its standard service revolver. Its paperwork names were a mouthful, including "New Model Army Metallic Cartridge Revolving Pistol", so soldiers and clerks shortened it. Single Action Army describes exactly what it is: a revolver you cock by hand for each shot, made for the Army. M1873 and Model 1873 come from the adoption year.

It was chambered for the new .45 Colt cartridge, a black-powder round Colt developed with the Union Metallic Cartridge Company. The Cavalry carried it until 1893, when the .38-caliber Colt Model 1892 double action replaced it. Other branches kept the old single action, and it saw service in the Spanish–American and Philippine–American wars.

The Peacemaker

This is the name everyone knows, and the one with the haziest origin. The Colt was "dubbed" the Peacemaker as it spread among ranchers, lawmen and outlaws on the frontier. Whether that was a salesman's phrase, a newspaperman's joke or just cowboy irony is not settled by the sources we checked, so we won't pretend it is.

What is clear is that the name stuck. Today "Peacemaker" is used both for original Colts and, informally, for the whole family of SAA-pattern revolvers. Replica makers lean on it heavily. Ammunition Depot's listing for the Cimarron Model P Pre-War, for example, calls it a "peacemaker-style" revolver copied from an original 1873 single action.

Model P and the Frontier Six-Shooter

Model P is Colt's own factory designation, and collectors and reproduction makers still use it. Cimarron's line, mentioned above, carries the name today.

The Frontier Six-Shooter is a more specific story. Winchester's Model 1873 lever-action rifle fired the .44-40 cartridge, and a man who could carry one box of ammunition for both his rifle and his revolver had a real advantage. Colt chambered the SAA for .44-40 and marked those guns "Colt Frontier Six-Shooter" on the barrel, first acid-etched and later roll-stamped. It became the second-most-produced chambering of the first generation, behind .45 Colt.

That idea, one cartridge for rifle and revolver, still drives cowboy action shooters today. Our single action vs double action history explains why the hand-cocked revolver hung on for so long.

The barrel names

The SAA's barrel lengths earned names of their own, and you'll still see them in catalogs:

Then there is the Buntline Special, the long-barreled Colt supposedly presented to Wyatt Earp. The story was popularized by writer Stuart Lake and is disputed by other accounts. A 1950s television series about Earp made the Buntline famous all over again, whatever the truth.

Nicknames without paper

Search for the SAA online and you will find more colorful names than we have listed here, often with confident origin stories attached. Some may be real period slang; some were coined much later by collectors, writers or marketing departments. The references we checked document Single Action Army, M1873, Model P, Peacemaker and Frontier Six-Shooter, so those are the names we stand behind. "Six-shooter" and "six-gun" are safe too: they describe any six-chambered revolver, and the SAA is the one most people picture.

When a seller attaches a dramatic name or story to a specific gun, ask for documentation. A factory letter is worth more than a legend.

The gun's generations

Collectors also name the SAA by generation, and the generation matters for value and for handling:

• First generation (1873–1941). Roughly 357,000 made through 1940, in more than 30 chamberings from .22 rimfire up to .476 Eley. About 158,000 were .45 Colt and about 71,000 were .44-40.
• Second generation (1956–1974). Production stopped around World War II, then resumed because Western films and television created fresh demand. Serial numbers run from 0001SA to 73205SA.
• Third generation (from 1976). Limited production in the late 1970s and 1980s, then a revival in the 1990s as cowboy action shooting took off.

Total production across all generations exceeds 457,000. If you're trying to place an individual gun, our serial-number dating guide explains what the tables can and can't tell you.

Who carried it

The SAA's roll call is long. Custer's 7th Cavalry carried it at the Little Bighorn. Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders had it at San Juan Hill. George S. Patton carried a custom ivory-gripped SAA. Pancho Villa used a five-inch Bisley in .44-40.

Hollywood did the rest. In 1953, William R. Wilson founded Great Western Arms to make near-copies for film and television Westerns, and that demand helped persuade Colt to restart production in 1956. In 2011 Arizona named the Colt Single Action Army its official state firearm.

The load-five question

Original Colt and Army instructions called for loading all six chambers and resting the hammer in its safety notch. Later gun writers recommended leaving the chamber under the hammer empty, because a hammer-mounted firing pin resting on a live primer can fire if the hammer is struck. That five-round habit is now standard practice for traditional single actions and is required in cowboy action matches. Our load-five guide walks through the sequence.

The SAA today

Colt still makes the Single Action Army. Uberti, now owned by Beretta, builds close copies such as the 1873 Cattleman, and importers including Cimarron and Taylor's & Company sell Colt-pattern guns under their own names. Ruger's Vaquero borrows the look with modern transfer-bar lockwork. Our single-action buying guide sorts the field.

If you want to shoot the SAA's own cartridge, the .45 Long Colt category at Ammunition Depot includes mild cowboy loads suited to Colt-pattern guns. And for a modern take on the 1873 pattern, Ammunition Depot lists guns like the Taylor's & Company 1873 in .45 Colt with a case-hardened frame and 5.5-inch Artillery-length barrel.

Editorial note: This is an independent editorial overview built from manufacturer specifications, retailer listings and published sources. We have not performed hands-on testing of the products discussed, and nothing here is a performance guarantee. Verify specifications, compatibility and the law where you live.

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