I’m copying this from the “Ultimate Highway Patrolman Thread” where I first posted it. I just wanted to make sure the answer gets as much exposure as it can since I see it questioned enough here, there, and anywhere gun talk goes on.

It doesn’t get brought up too often, but I have always wanted to know what the marking on all the Highway Patrolman barrels was about. It looks like a bow sided H with four dots around it. I have read some crazy stories on what that symbol means. I don’t know why I waited so long to go right to the source for the answer but here it is posted with Mr. Roy Jinks’ permission:

“I hate to disappoint you, but those dots have no meaning and are only a decoration. The problem is everyone wants to read something special into these markings. But there is no special meaning at all.” - Roy G. Jinks, Historian, Smith & Wesson

After some of the crazy stories I have read and been told or even had guys swear was the truth (gun show stories are the greatest…) this boils down to one simple fact of life.

Sometimes the reality isn’t as much fun as the fiction.


The ultimate Highway Patrolman thread.including N frame ser# ranges

Roy has it right and as much as we would like to find some secret arcane meaning to the mark, it has absolutely no significant meaning.

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Dick

Have to confess I have wondered about those markings myself.

Does any other model have anything like it? Kind of wonder why the HP would have meaningless decorative markings & none of the others.

Unless... Unless Mr. Jinks is also in on some sinister coverup... :tinfoilhat:

This is gonna make me look like an idiot, but I'll confess.

I was issued a Model 28 which I carried throught out most of my LE Career, When I retired 17 years ago, the department let me keep my service revolver. I've shot the heck out of it before and after I retired.

I just had to go look cause I didn't remember any Dots, I 'd sworn mine didnt have any.

Guess I wasn't a very good "trained observer".

Jinks is very far from perfect. He is not Godlike ...unlike John Browning.

Those marks are intentional,... And they have hidden meanings. Only the upper echelon members of this S&W forum are given the meaning...they must pass rigorous exams, serious discretionary committees, and work at menial jobs for Lee for years... " Wax on, Wax off".....

Only at this point do you get this first key of " Enlightenment "...

From there your Journey continues .... Grasshoppers.

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Non gratum anus rodentum

Mine are Special dots though.



rags

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RIP Shipmate

I know mine doesn't have that stuff ....wait a minute - I'll check my pics...

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Lou

Giz, you are so right and as a member of the SWCA, I have passed all of Lee's tests and have been Enlightened. But I am sworn to never disclose the meaning and deny any knowledge thereof or I will be banished and must then walk through the world forever foresaken as an uncleansed one.

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Dick

I suppose you couldn't be bribed. I would be willing to give you serial number one of the .357 Magnum; but only if you reveal the secrets.

And you thought that it had disappeared from J. Edgar Hoover's estate!!

No big secret at all.
This symbol means "To Be Carried and Used By a Real Man".

Those Prissy Model 27's don't seem to have the issue...

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Non gratum anus rodentum

Only the Knights Templar know the secret meaning and they will carry that and the location of the ark of the covenant to their graves.

HA! I am "Hiram". I know the answer.

Here is the answer. It is so simple to see, we all overlooked it.
Take your M28, hold it in your left hand muzzle up, standing on your left foot with the sun over your right shoulder at midnight.
If the planets are aligned properly, you will see the secret meaning appear on the barrel.
But you didn't hear if from me.

Stu

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NRA Benefactor/Cert Instructor

It is also the only S&W named model revolver that has it's name roll-marked on the barrel, until the "Mountain Gun"! Wonder why they would do that?? LOL

I put the 'Question' to a high ranking acolyte of the SWCA. After consuming a full bottle of my best brown liquid, the worthy told me this.
" I will not confirm or deny that such a marking was ever placed on a S&W product or that it has any special meaning."
The next morning I was questioned by Homeland Security for 4 hours, and told I was now on the 'WATCH' list.

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Field Researcher. IGC

What that mark means is that the barrel was imported from the 24th Century and incorporates super conductive field coils. Add a common MS-76 battery in the grip frame and connect it to some very well hidden contact points and you have a revolver that can fire a bullet equipped with a steel core at 14,500 feet per second without any increase in recoil.

You guys are terrible!!!!!!!

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The Last Standing Knight

It is simply a cattlebrand.
The truth is simple.
Blessings

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TEXAS, by GOD

Well, the nefarious plot is succeeding. S&W has everyone focused on and wondering about the 4 dots. The fact is, the dots are mere subterfuge. The real meaning of this mark is in the lines around which the dots are arranged.
Those lines symbolize the four rivers that flowed from Eden in the beginning, watering the whole earth.
The mark means that S&W is the center of the known universe, and all good things flow from it.
If the dots have any meaning at all, they symbolize the disaffected and detached "other companies" who insist on pretending they make real guns - when everyone knows that all good things firearms come from Smith & Wesson. So sorry, Colt and Ruger and . . .
Now, the Mafia will put out a hit contract on me. But I felt you all had a need to know.
Jack

Not to h/j or go off-topic - BUT - I'd have loved to have been in the meeting whereby the name 'Highway Patrolman' was decided on.
As a career municipal police officer (ret'd), I am a bit fashionably offended by the imposed slight.

Shouldn't it have been more all-inclusive such as 'Lawman's Companion'?, (oops, that almost sounds like the modernized reference to 'partner') or 'Police Interceptor'? (oops, that one was taken...), or 'Think Positive, Police'? (no, too similar to Colt)
Anyway, there's alot of guys (& girls) out there that work really hard in LE and have not been graced with a great model S&W named for their position.
(Mine would have had to have small font and be named 'You're Covering Three Beats Tonight'.

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Ret'd LEO
SWCA #2275

Someone once said that some S&W high muckity muck's wife suggested the Highway Patrolman moniker as S&W's response to the old Colt Trooper.
Don't remember where I read it and wouldn't give a dime for it's veracity.

Close, but no brass ring for you.
Florence Van Orden, wife of retired Marine General Van Orden who owned a major S&W and Winchester dealership in Quantico, Virginia, was the person who suggested the name. She made her comment directly to then-president of S&W, Carl Hellstrom. He liked it.
JP

My Highway Patrolman story is less romantic and more down to earth. When the Highway Patrolman came out it competed on price. My hardware store had the new Ruger flat top .357 Blackhawk for about $85 give or take a couple of bucks.

Weatherby's store in South Gate, CA had a new and...wait for it...cheaper model Smith & Wesson, called the Highway Patrolman. With it's less polished finish and no frills it went for, you guessed it about $85 give or take.

My dad had to buy it for me because I was only 19. He bragged to everyone that his son had a .357 magnum. I was very responsible and learned to load my own. Young studs want HOT loads. I used 14 grains of 2400 over cast Elmer Keith style bullets...had to scrub like hell to remove the fouling.

It shot so hard and battered my thumb web so much...not to mention destroying my hearing, that I could not wait to unload it. I hated that gun.

How times change. Now we all know about protecting our ears and no one loads lead slugs over charges that hot...and of course the Highway Patrolman has become a collector classic. But...so did the Ruger Flattops.

Back then...who knew? Sometimes good things are wasted on the young
10/22

After reading this, my mind was opened and the message was delivered to me: "Buy more S&W's, you can never have enough of what flows out of the true center of the universe". I'm off to the gun store now. Pics to follow.

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Pat Henson

Uhm, Giz...

I'd like to remind you of the first rule of Fight Club...

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Non illegitimae carborundum

IIRC: S&W Highway Patrolman-$85.00
Ruger Blackhawk- $87.50

Could've called iit the "Meter Maid Special"

The symbol on the highway patrolman is an "H" surrounded by four dots. The four dots represent the four points of the compass, North, South, East, West.

The symbol was designed to indicate that the Highway Patrolman is there to protect from all directions.

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James Redfield
LM #497

28-2 barrel right side.jpg

No no no no no! You've all got it wrong. The doohickies were selected after S&W's scientific research department found people could not figure out the name.
General rules of reading the 'Murican language include reading from left to right.
This caused people, upon seeing the prototype barrels which were subsequently destroyed to avoid confusion, to read the name as ".357 HIGHWAY" on the first line, and "CTG. PATROLMAN" on the second.
Hence, the curved lines are merely "connect the dots" so people will read vertically instead of horizontally.
Really. We need to promote facts, here.

No meaning at all. That means that S&W paid a Tool & Die maker to use his talent/knowledge to design a mark for the barrel that means absolutely nothing. It had to go thru the approval process and get a final ok by the production mgr. ME thinks that the S&W historian is blowing smoke and does NOT know the answer.

See post #30.

I wish I had bought a lot of Ruger Flat tops back in the day. I bought only one .44 Flat Top, sometime in the mid-1960s, like new but no box, as I remember, for $60 at a gun show. I think it had a 4-digit SN. I didn't reload .44 Mag at that time, so bravely went forth with factory loads. It took about two shots to convince me that the Ruger was a real handful, as it about split the web between my thumb and forefinger. I hung onto it a few more years without shooting in much, and around 1969 I unloaded it onto a friend for a little more than I paid for it (including a partial box of factory ammo and a holster). When I see the prices these things bring now, selling it had to have been one of my dumber sales, but far from the dumbest. I haven't even seen a .44 Flat top for a very long time.