POTD: Flat Top Frontier – Colt New Frontier SAA in .38 Special

Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a Single Action Army that ditched the cowboy sights for something you can aim with. This is a second-generation Colt New Frontier in .38 Special.

Colt dropped the Single Action Army in 1941 and figured that was the end of it. Then television happened. Westerns put a Colt on every screen in the country, and by 1956 the guns were back in production. That second generation run gave us the New Frontier in 1961, the target shooter’s take on the design. The frame is flat on top with an adjustable Accro rear sight and a ramp front, replacing the grooved topstrap and blade that made hitting anything past 25 yards a matter of faith. Colt had built a flat top target Single Action back in the late 1880s, so the New Frontier was a revival more than a new idea. The name came straight out of Kennedy’s campaign language.

What makes this one odd is the chambering. New Frontiers mostly went out the door in .45 Colt and .357 Magnum, with .44 Special trailing behind. The .38 Special was a rare order. Don Wilkerson’s research on postwar Colt single actions puts the .38 Special with a 5 1/2 inch barrel at about one out of every 109 New Frontiers built, which makes it scarcer than the .44 Special guns collectors already chase. A .38 Special in a single action Colt is a soft shooting, cheap to feed combination, so it is strange nobody ordered them.

Most of our POTDs utilize images from our friends at Rock Island Auction Company, the premier firearms auction in the United States. Take some time to browse their current auctions – who knows, maybe you’ll find a piece of history to take home!

“Extremely Rare Colt Second Generation New Frontier Single Action Army Revolver in .38 Special with Factory Letter.” Rock Island Auction, www.rockislandauction.com/detail/5032/661/extremely-rare-colt-new-frontier-single-action-army-revolver. Accessed 3 July 2026.

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