Christensen Arms is a hunting and archery brand founded in Fayette, Utah, in 1995. It is headquartered in Gunnison, Utah.
The first carbon fiber barrels from Christensen Arms were not for sale. In 1995 they went onto .22 rifles handed out as gifts to aerospace clients. The man behind them, Roland Christensen, grew up in Fayette, a Sanpete County town of about 245 people. He earned an engineering doctorate at the University of Utah and worked in aerospace. In 1984 he moved home and started making prosthetic feet in his Fayette garage.
His rifle idea was to wrap a steel barrel in carbon fiber, cutting weight and adding stiffness. When American Rifleman toured the Gunnison plant, workers spun each barrel on a lathe and added ply after ply in alternating directions, with a radial wrap to control expansion and lengthwise layers for rigidity. The company moved there from Fayette in 2009. By its own timeline it sold 1,338 rifles in 2011 and 33,973 in 2020. It has since gotten the hang of charging for them.
Private equity firm Ancor Capital Partners has owned Christensen Arms since August 2019. Christensen told the Sanpete Messenger he started his companies in the valley so people would not have to leave to find work. The rifles are still built in Gunnison.
By 2005 Christensen Arms had launched its own magazine, Christensen's Hunting Illustrated. That same year it launched a TV series called Christensen Outdoors.
