The Colt Walker is the more successful followup to the Colt Paterson 1836, created by Samuel Colt in partnership with Samuel Walker for the Mexican-American War, it was designed as a pistol for cavalry, (who kept their pistols on their horse) for use against horses and other cavalry, the Colt Walker is physically large and made for a powerful load that is still the most powerful handgun ever issued by the US military (even after the invention of smokeless powder), using 60 grains of powder to propel a .44 caliber lead ball.

Only a little over a thousand were produced, including 100 made specifically for the civilian market, but the high power combined with the fragile design led to only around 800 being returned at the end of the war, where after losing much of their supply in a ship crash in 1848, only 191 returned to the Colt factory in New York, and only 82 of those were in serviceable condition (these numbers may have been inflated by enlisted soldiers' well reported mishandling the strange new technology and misreporting their status to steal the expensive pistols) and another three confirmed purchased by officers. The Colt Walker would be succeeded by the far more successful, and much smaller, Colt Dragoon.

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