First .45 Colt lever gun ?

[Plum Loco]

Question for the old timers now , back before all the cowboy guns were made by everyone .
Was the Winchester or the Rossi first in .45 colt ?  Seems like it was  with the upswing in interest in SASS  and CAS that a .45 Colt lever rifle was finally made , I still have my Rossi [ Interarms ] .45 for 14 years now . But it seems like I had a .45 Winchester just before the Rossi .    Just got to wondering , fantastic the choices available now   

[Adirondack Jack]

I'm fairly sure that some were around before SASS, like maybe in the 1960s or 70s???

[Plum Loco]

When we started the shoots here in Southern Indiana about 1990 , to follow the CA boys who started SASS in CA  , nobody had a 45 colt lever gun , and there was a lot of rejoiceing    when somebody finally made a lever gun to shoot everyones favorite back then , the .45 colt .
Everyone was shooting the .38/ .357 , 44 mag/ 44 special  , 44-40 , etc in the lever guns  
And the .45 colt Winchester would throw out a live round evry once in awhile when working the action quickly , which made the Rossis favorites of many , till other mfr's started making their lever guns in .45 colt .

[Drydock]

Marlin made their 1894s (Round barrel, microgroove rifling) in .45 Colt in 1989.  I had one, sold it later when I got my Henry, then found out they only made 889 of them in that configuration. (AAARRRRGGGHHH!)  The next chambering for the round was the octogon barrelled Cowboy model. 

That may have been the first one.  I was looking for a .45 Colt rifle at the time, and only got that because I saw it in the 89 Marlin catalog and ordered it thru the Navy Exchange.  No one else was cataloging that chambering in a lever at that time.  It was all .44 Mag and .357.

[Plum Loco]

Thank you Drydock  for the information , it helps .
Was at a gun show recently , and asked the ones that I knew shot in the matches early on , and like myself , fuzzy memory with the  'first ' .45 colt lever guns , but they all remembered the ' non.45 colt' lever guns that they started with CAS shooting  .

So perhaps chambering in .45 Colt lever rifle , .......Marlin was the FIRST , Winchester  second , and Rossi was third , and then the Ubertis and so on and on .

Drydock as you know also ,  along with the many .38/357 and 44 mag lever guns , there also was the 44-40 Henrys from the Italians , and early on I had a engraved .38 special [only] 1866 , a beautiful rifle , sure wish that I had kept it . But I wanted a .45 Colt lever gun , so I could load and carry one cartridge for both revolver and rifle  

[RRio]

I had a 1894-1994 centennial Winchester trapper model in .45 Colt, that a friend gave me as a Christmas present, and if I am not mistaken, he also bought himself a SS Rossi '92 in .45 about the same time. And that was the firat levers in .45 that I had heard of.

[Shotgun Franklin]

I've always believed that if one of the rifle makers would have built a .45 S&W rifle, Lever or Pump, the .45 S&W would have had a really big jump in popularity.