The 1883 Colt-Burgess was the Colt company's single, brief endeavor to enter the lever action "cowboy" rifle market. Winchester had been making some moves to break into Colt's lucrative shotgun and pistol markets, and Colt reacted by hiring noted gun designer Andrew Burgess to design them a rifle to compete with the Winchester 1873.

Only about 6400 of these were made (in both rifle and carbine configurations) before Colt and Winchester executives got together and negotiated a deal to stay out of each others' areas of specialty. As a result, Colt stopped manufacturing the 1883 Colt-Burgess rifle, and Winchester stopped developing (and importing) revolvers.

Because of its short production span, the Burgess remains a particularly rare lever action rifle today. For folks who are interested in shooting one without investing the money to own and original, reproductions are available today from Uberti.