Springfield Trapdoor Rifle

Every western afficionado has their favorite firearm. When it come to pistols the Colt .45 Peacemaker usually wins hands down. While I will admit that the Winchester lever action 1873 rifle is the usual choice for western favorite (especially since Jimmy Stewart's classic movie) I must vote for the Springfield Trapdoor .45-70.
Before all you firearms experts rise up and lynch me I must explain why it is my favorite.
When I was about 10 years of age my parents took my sister and me on a cross country trip to view civil war sites. Of course one of the stopovers was Gettysburg.
During the fifties and sixties television and movies contantly portrayed Early American characters such as Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone and Kit Carson. Consequently I became enamored or the musket and nagged my father to buy me one on the trip. Everywhere we went such Revolutionary and Civil War era flintlocks and percussion cap muskets were far too expensive for our budget. Consequently as a ten year old child I was very disappointed.
Then, in of all places a barber shop, my father found a Trapdoor rifle hanging on the wall with a 35 dollar price tag on it. It was a real antique rifle and the closest thing to a musket he could afford. For the last forty years that rifle has hung on my wall at home and now represents not only fond memories of my childhood trip but of my now deceased father.
The Springfield Trapdoor was introduced in 1873 and was produced by the Springfiled Armory for the US Military. It was originally conceived as a conversion for the thousands of Model 1861 muskets left over from the Civil War. This conversion consisted of cutting away a portion of the musket's breech and replacing it with a new trapdoor breechblock that worked by lifting the trap upward using a thumb lever that was located just above the lock plate. A blackpowder cartridge was then inserted and the trap closed and locked down before firing.
There was a lot of controversy in having the military adopt the Trapdoor since there were other models competing for the contract that were more accurate or easy to load. Models such as the Remington breechblock or the Sharps were probably better in many respects, but at the time the govenment considered the cheaper price more important than the usefulness of the weapon or the safety of the soldiers. Many experts, in fact, attribute part of the later massacre of Custer's men to the fact that the Trapdoors the troopers carried were slow to reload as opposed to the enemy's lever actions. The blackpowder shells also tended to jam in the breech until later models developed a better extractor.
That said, the Trapdoor is now a long distance competition favorite since it is inherently an accurate and solid military rifle. Furthermore it is a collector's dream since the Springfield is rapidly appreciating in value even while many can still be found for under a thousand dollars.
The Winchester and Henry clearly deserve their place in history (and the movies) but I still love to clean and shoot my Trapdoor. Someday I hope to pass it down to my grandson or daughter. Meanwhile it looks great over the mantle.

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