GRRW - THE EARLY YEARS

GRRW - THE EARLY YEARS by Barry "Buck" Conner & Dwain "Trapper Tom" Thompson with input from Phil Meek


I purchased my first GRRW rifle after shooting a friend's, and little did we know what we were getting into? But before telling our story of the early years with Green River Rifle Works, here's a little history on its founder, Dr. Gary White of Roosevelt, Utah.

DOC WHITE

Phil Meek writes: After completing medical school, Gary "Doc" White entered the Army. He ended up being stationed in Alaska and got to know Bill Fuller and some other people there that owned original Hawken rifles. Doc said they provided him the opportunity to examine, disassemble, and even shoot some of the originals. Attached is a photo from Doc's website of one of those original Hawken rifles from Alaska that he said was his favorite Hawken. He wrote an article about it that was published in the July, 1975 issue of Buckskin Report. Also attached is a photo of a GRRW Hawken rifle that resembles Doc's favorite original, though not an exact copy. Of particular interest is that this original has a two-piece sheet iron nose cap which GRRW duplicated on their Hawken rifles prior to the Bridger Commemorative Hawken project in 1975-76. After 1976, GRRW Hawkens were built with a cast nose cap similar to the original Bridger Hawken. Doc's favorite is now in Jim Gordon's collection in New Mexico.


DOC & THE HAWKEN RIFLE

·    Phil Meeks, writes: Doc went to med school with an obligation to serve in the Army after he got his medical license.  He ended up being stationed in Alaska with the Army and got to know Bill Fuller and some other people there that owned original Hawken rifles.  Doc said they provided him the opportunity to examine, disassemble, and even shoot some of the originals.  Attached is a photo from Doc’s website of one of those original Hawken rifles from Alaska that he said was his favorite Hawken.  He wrote an article about it that was published in the July, 1975 issue of Buckskin Report.  Also attached is a photo of one of my GRRW Hawken rifles that I think resembles Doc’s favorite original, though not an exact copy.  Of particular interest, is that this original has a two-piece sheet iron nose cap which GRRW duplicated on their Hawken rifles prior to the Bridger Commemorative Hawken project in 1975-76.  After 1976, GRRW Hawken’s were built with a cast nose cap similar to the original Bridger Hawken. The original is now in Jim Gordon’s collection in New Mexico

OUR GRRW EXPERIENCE

I purchased my first GRRW rifle, a Leman ½ stock percussion in .58 cal. from Mountain Armory in Ft. Collins CO in the summer of 1973.  Had shot a friends GRRW ½ stock Hawken Ser. No. H004 that he had purchase in late 1972 in the same caliber, so now I have one but a different model.  Gave around $200 plus tax for the gun read on and you’ll see why so cheap.


Once getting home, after having stopped at several friends to show my new purchase off, the wife comes out and tells me to call Mountain Armory in Ft. Collins. I mess around with feeding the horses and visiting with family then make the call. The owner of this firm is beside himself, seems the two GRRW guns had just come into his shop, his wife put them out on display and priced them. She had put the stores price on the sales tags with no profit added. Now he wants me to either bring the rifle back or pay the correct suggested retail price, he’s being a jerk. This goes on for a half hour with him yelling and me trying to tell him that I paid what was on the sales tag and shown on my receipt. It finally ends up after all the baloney taken from this dealer I would have paid without a problem if he hadn’t been such a pain and his bad manners about this mix up. Finally I told him what to do with his business and his poor phone skills, and this ended me doing any more business with this firm.

WE ORDER GRRW GUNS

That following week I stopped by my old friend’s shop in Collins, Cache La Poudre Rifle Works and told Mike about my experience with buying the GRRW gun and Mountain Armory’s owner. Mike knew and had similar experiences dealing over the years with him. McCormick is really shrewd about such things and asked “how do we get our hands on GRRW guns, let’s have some fun with our friend”. I make a call about where “Trapper Tom” got his Hawken and he gives me Greg Robert’s phone number in Nederland CO whom I hadn’t met yet but knew of him.

Mike calls Greg and orders the required number of guns to be a dealer - two at that time. I take the phone and order the same number to become a dealer (blanket trader). We each have ordered a Hawken ½ stock percussion and a Leman ½ stock percussion in .58 caliber. Greg will contact McCormick once he has guns in hand, as I’m on the road for my job and hard to reach most of the time.


MEETING DOC WHITE

This is pretty neat “Trapper” and several of us go the Colorado Muzzle Loading Association’s (CSMLA). “State Championship Shoot” at Leadville CO (old Camp Hale location where the Mountain Troops were trained for WWII).  We are early, meet CSMLA members with “Trapper” taking us around. One of these guys is Greg Roberts WOW! he’s the guy I talked to a few weeks ago. Several days go by and another old friend of “Trapper’s” shows up, one Jack Lewis (well-known dealer of antique arms and a person that my father has dealt with from Ohio for years) - small world. Then another friend comes into camp from Utah and ends up at the same table, I’m thinking “this is old home week”. This gentleman turns out to be Dr. Gary White out of Roosevelt, UT “Mr. GRRW” the man with the idea, the money and the firm by the same name. Boy was this a great week with all the in-the-know guys in one place. In the evenings they talked about antiques, ideas for new products, it just didn’t stop. We talked about this meeting for weeks after, a fun experience.  In the next few years we would see either Greg or Doc at different functions dealing with buck-skinning or muzzle loaders.

NOTE: When Doc was coming to the Colorado State Muzzle Loading Association "State Championship Shoots" he spent time with Jack Lewis (antique arms collector from Ohio). Jack always had a trade table of really nice old guns with a Hawken original once in a while. At one of the CSMLA shoots at Leadville Jack had three original Hawken’s, two were just average condition, well used but one was a beauty in great condition with a price to match. This was in maybe 1980, he wanted $5,000 firm. I offered him my GRRW Leman and $3,000. He just smiled at me. I went back several times with other trades but couldn't make a deal.  Can't remember if Doc saw that one, or he may not have come that year.

A friend "Liver Eatin' " Sweeney shows up with a new GRRW full-stock Hawken flintlock (the prototype that Greg Richards was shown shooting). Trapper just came up over the creek bank where he had been trapping. Here's the gun that's seen in magazines and now on the Internet. We couldn’t remember the serial number, it may not have one It had an inset piece of brass in the barrel that read “Death Wish”, behind the rear sight. How slick is that, the first reproduction full stock we see.

EARLY 1974 GRRW GUNS ARE IN …

McCormick leaves word at the phone company garage in Ft. Collins that we need to pick-up our order in Nederland. If any of you knew Michael McCormick you know why he contacted me in this manner, as he was so cheap he squeaked when he walked. His message should have read “stop by shop get check, go pick up our guns on your nickel”.  He wouldn’t spend the money to call my home as it was long distance, plus he wouldn’t drive out of the city limits of Ft. Collins – cheap, cheap, cheap. A long story of how he could save money at every ones expense. I pick up our order and place an order for a pair of kit guns, (1) Hawken and (1) Leman both percussion in .54 cal. this time.



Seen behind this cabin is the second homestead we were using.

I’m selling out of the little old homestead building at Masonville on the weekends or out of a trade tent at events, I make a few phone calls that I have GRRW guns and sell my first one the next day to Dave Wolfely - he gets the ½ stock Hawken and has to make payments. At work, Bob Williams wants to see the Leman, has already seen McCormick’s guns, now looking for the best wood on Lemans which was the one I had (I high graded before delivery to Cache La Poudre). Bob has to wait until pay day a week away. I’m sold out of GRRW in short order, Cache La Poudre Rifle Works takes a few more weeks and he’s out too. John Goswick checks Mountain Armory, but they don’t have any and are waiting on an order.

Our GRRW kit’s show up in late-summer of 1974. Now Old West Arms has guns and Butch York comes up from Denver to a club shoot with a ½ stock Hawken he got from them. GRRW guns are really taking off and dealers are scrambling to find their guns. Our T/C sales are slow as everyone wants a GRRW (cost twice as much as the T/C Hawken) but correct in appearance when compared to originals. The fever slows and normal sale of less expensive firearms picks up and continues, being available from House of Muskets, Track of the Wolf, Log Cabin Shop, etc.


In 1977 or 1978 I talked to Don Novak of Old West Arms and he gives me a discount on two Lemans - one a ½ stock percussion and the other a full-stock flint gun (which I kept for myself). He had a good supply of Leman’s, being the easier model to get. That was probably the last new Green River rifles we bought or sold.

I shot the full-stock a few times then sold it to a friend a few years later for double the purchase price. Then 25 years later buy the same gun back at double what I sold it for (WOW! have values changed).

Over the years we traded for used GRRW’s, mostly Leman percussion’s would show up and a Hawken or two, but not many.


I stopped blanket trading and opened a store front in the spring of 1981 with Ben Thompson running the store while I worked in Englewood CO, driving back and forth – a 75 mile hike each way every day.

Buckhorn Rendezvous late 1981


We probably had two or three guys talk about GRRW, but never saw anything or any become available with price increases. And then C. Sharps Arms comes on board and are available. Our interests changed to black powder cartridge and we built a 1000 yard range on the hill beside the 100 yard existing range that the “Buckhorn Skinners” used. We started a new club for our new market “Buckhorn Buffalo Runners” never did anything like the original Buckhorn club for shoots or members.

We carried “Factory Built”, ‘Kit” guns & guns in the “White”.

Uberti had revolvers, lever guns, rifles, and shotguns along with the Sharps from Big Timber. This kept the money flowing for the store with good sales on these guns. Don Novak passed on and his wife Pat called me to see if we were interested in Sharps and all the accessories. Ben and I go to Old West Arms the next day and take everything she has - guns, leather scabbards, belts, loading equipment, ammo. Pat makes us a sweet deal, showed us what they had paid for this old inventory and sold us everything off of old invoices that were 5 - 7 years old. I left Ben there to be sure no one else got involved and went to the credit union to get a cashier’s check. They had several GRRW guns hanging on the wall but we were out of funds, should have asked about them but forgot with getting new toys. Now that was exciting.

I had forgotten that I have had a few more than remembered, according to Trapper. I forgot about a Leman 1/2 stock in .58 cal. that Frank Hall (part owner, gunsmith at Cache La Poudre Rifle Works) converted from percussion to flint, and added a Hawken steel butt plate and trigger guard with double triggers. Has a silver plate in the cheek piece that read: "Built by Leman” - "Breed" - “Repaired by Hawken". That gun would shoot tight groups out to 200 yards (done at a match at the Colorado State Championship Shoot one year. Another guy and I shot for an hours, and finally we decided to flip a coin to see who would win - I lost. Should have kept shooting but Bob Williams was running out of balls for his GRRW gun.

That's as much as we could remember tonight (getting past Trapper's bed time) about those early years of GRRW, and hope this adds some more information or helps those wanting to know about the early years as a dealer.

Sold the full-stock purchased back after 25 years when moving to Utah in 2007, made a few extra bucks on one of those gun sale websites. Bob Lienemann said “once a trader always a trader”.


See the article written by Bob Lienemann titled “A Well-Traveled GRRW Leman Indian Trade Rifle”, in the 2014 GRRW Gazette.  I twisted Bob’s arm and bought this rifle to replace the one sold when moving - “just need one more old GRRW rifle” I told the wife ….

COMPANY RECORDS

Phil Meeks, writes: The GRRW record book that Carl Walker rescued from the dumpster is incomplete for the early years and the last year or two, and it only records the serial numbers for the early rifles with no descriptions.  In the middle years, the records show details of the caliber of the gun, the rifle stocker, the customer name and address, and any special order items. In that last year or two, they simply quit recording any info in the record book indicating how chaotic things got towards the end. It is possible that the person that maintained the record book quit or was let go.

As a result, there is no indication how many guns went to Mountain Armory, Cache La Poudre Rifle Works, and Buckhorn Rendezvous in those first few years.  Later, Old West Arms and Trappers Rendezvous were big customers and are listed for quite a few rifles in the record book.  Gallenson’s in Salt Lake City was also a big dealer and is listed several times.  According to the record book, a significant number went to gun and sporting goods stores and not just to individuals.

Please give us a break as Trapper turns 84 this year and I will make it to 82. We laugh about this as we figured we wouldn’t see 60 years of age.  “Remember the older I get the better I was”.

Thank you for your time.