Susanville Man Has 150 Guns
December 6, 1945
The guns which have played a vital part in making of America and of California are the hobby of R. E. Hefner, 706 Pine Street.
In a room at his home these guns, some 150 of them, are arranged on the walls.
Dating all the way from an old Brown Bess, which almost certainly came to this country as a Red Coat’s weapon and likely ended up on the shoulder of a Continental, to a Filipino guerrilla’s gas pipe gun, the weapons tell a lot of history.
Prize of the collection and shown in the above picture, is a rifle made for and actually used by Jim Bridger, mountain man and one of the great western pioneers.
There is no question about its authenticity. Hefner has the documents to prove that Bridger actually owned the rifle.
Anyone picking it up realizes what mighty men those old pioneers were. In comparison, a modern big game gun feels like a feather.
The rifle, which is a .55 caliber weighs 13.5 pounds, and feels much heavier. Made in the early 1840’s, it used percussion caps and handmade balls.
