U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company
Private firearms-manufacturing company based in Hartford, Connecticut
United States Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, Inc. (U.S. Fire Arms Mfg. Co., USFA) was a privately held firearms-manufacturing firm based in Hartford, Connecticut. Until 2011, United States Fire-Arms Manufacturing Company, Inc. was known for producing single action revolvers, which were clones of the Colt Single Action Army revolver. The factory was located "Under the Blue Dome", in the East Armory building of the former Colt Armory complex, where Colt's Manufacturing Company produced many of their classic firearms in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In 2011, the company ceased production of replica colt revolvers, and publicly rebranded itself as ZiPFactory.com, based on its titular USFA ZiP .22 firearm. The company formally dissolved in January 2017, and the company was the last firearms maker in the Colt's Armory Complex. The site is now seeking National Historic Landmark status.
History
The company used to maintain an "Old Armory Custom Shop" which produced custom firearms to order.
“U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company” enters the record as private firearms-manufacturing company based in Hartford, Connecticut. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Fire, Arms and Manufacturing can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Fire, Arms and Manufacturing provides the most credible route into that argument.
The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7863179. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011 and 2017.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company primary sources, U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company archive and Fire research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Fire Arms Manufacturing Company” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.