[Jeff Higgins]

Nope, no serial numbers have ever been marked on any of these rifles. Literally the only marking is the "S. Hawken St. Louis" on the top barrel flat. The caliber is not even marked anywhere on the rifle. I put my name and the year I built it on the stock, in the barrel channel, on the bottom flat.

The lack of serial numbers or any real factory records make these somewhat difficult to date. We can only really date them by the changes incorporated over the years. Every now and then someone who kept their own records, like a diary, noted when and where they obtained theirs. It is largely from those records, not those of the Hawken brothers, that we are able to roughly date similar examples. There remains a lot of confusion over what was made when.

This is pretty much always the case with arms made for the civilian market, by these small manufacturers of that time period. Most didn't even put their own names, or company names on them. No markings whatsoever of any kind. These can only be identified by any unique features the maker liked. But, even then, many are only narrowed down to region and time period, with the individual who made it remaining a mystery to this day. Seems odd in this day and age, but at that time, these really were just "tools", like a shovel or an axe. Many of these shops made those as well, by the way.

The Hawken brothers themselves started their business by supplying traps, tools, and other hardware to the early fur traders heading up the Missouri out of St. Louis. Just general blacksmithing and hardware, with gun repair as a sideline.

They eventually decided, after repairing a good number of firearms, that they could probably make a better one themselves. No one is 100% sure when they started, so we've settled on 1823 as a best guess. Even then, they were far from a "production" shop, building only bespoke rifles for those who could afford them. They were about triple the cost of any other rifle of the time.

It wasn't until the mid to late 1830's that they went into "production". Even then, many other commercial manufacturers of the day outbuild and outsold them by factors of 100:1 to 1000:1. The notion that every Mountain Man worth his salt carried a Hawken is a myth. They were not only too late to the game to catch the height of the mountain fur trade, they were just too few and way too expensive.

Think of them more as the rifle of the Oregon Trail. Their "day in the sun" was relatively short, hitting their stride in the 1840's, with breach loaders a mere two decades away. Once those hit the scene it was all but "game over" for these big "plains rifles". Jacob had died, and Sam was getting on in years anyway, so it looked like the company was done.

An employee by the name of J. P. Gemmed purchased the company and had rifles on hand until WWI, but it gets a little murky after that. A guy by the name of Art Ressel is where the trail picks up just after the Korean War, producing guns on the original equipment. He kept it going until 1990, when he sold the whole works to its current owner, Greg Roberts. There remains a steady, if small demand for these rifles, but I don't think Greg produces more than a couple dozen per year.

Yes, the older guns are more valuable, and providence certainly counts, as with anything else. Not many survived the days when they were being ditched in favor of breach loaders. They were, after all, just a tool, and most led very, very hard lives. The only really decent ones survived by virtue of having been donated to museums and such. So, scarcity drives value, of course. Interestingly, though, quality examples produced by Ressel in his shop, or Roberts in his shop, do approach the value of guns dating from the 19th century. Even those made by professional makers outside of those shops, using Hawken Shop parts and plans, command similar prices. They are recognized as "originals" and valued accordingly.