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Inside Samuel Colt’s 19th Century Tinkerers’ Palace

Bob Child
/
AP
The iconic blue dome of “Coltsville” in Hartford, Conn.";s:

The National Park Service has awarded a $750,000 grant to historic Colt Park in Hartford, the factory Samuel Colt started in the 1800s to make his iconic gun. But in 2018, being a gun manufacturer is not so easy. Remington Firearms recently filed for bankruptcy. But the making of guns has been an intricate part of our history. Back in the mid-1800s, one gun maker went beyond just the making of firearms. He wanted to create a workplace utopia at his factory in Hartford, Conn.

Davis Dunavin loves telling stories, whether on the radio or around the campfire. He started in Missouri and ended up in Connecticut, which, he'd like to point out, is the same geographic trajectory taken by Mark Twain.