Photodump: Museum Gun Collection

While my friend from Montana was here, we decided to visit the local Museum of Western Colorado (though actually I think they renamed it recently to something more self important and pretentious). It's not a huge museum, but they have a pretty darn good gun collection.

Everything from old muzzle loaders to lever actions to sawed off contraptions used by outlaws such as Butch Cassidy.

One of the more interesting guns is a Smith and Wesson lever action pistol.  If I understand correctly, this is what S&W, while still called Volcanic Repeating Arms, got started on.

And one of the most "historical" guns is this revolver, which was owned by Alfred Packer (see the AP carved into the front of the grip?)  In case you didn't know, ol' Al was Colorado's own (alleged) cannibal, and who those wacky hippies at University of Colorado in Boulder named the school cafeteria after.

This display, though, was my favorite, showing the guns used by every Mesa County Sheriff--from single action revolvers all the way up to Glocks.  Most interesting to me were the two guys in the middle who used a couple variants of the proto-1911.  Unfortunately my memory and the photo are too blurry to tell what the museum says the exact models were, but I think the one was a Colt Model 1890[something] and the second was a Colt Model 1900[something].  Anyone out there who thinks they can tell, please comment!

They usually have the Gatling Gun that was at Ft. Crawford, but apparently it was out the day we visited.  Despite that, it was a very enjoyable way to spend a morning.