Cowboy Boots and the Man Who Dreamed Them

When it comes to cowboy boots, the legend that accompanies them goes all the way back to the cattle drives of the late 1860s. The demand for beef was high and with a new market opening for food in California, thanks to the gold rush, it was even more important that suppliers get the product to market. Large cattle drives were organized that resulted in herds of cattle being driven from the open range to the railroad towns from which they could be shipped. This meant weeks on the trail for those riders who were responsible for getting them safely from point A to point B. While there were several trails that were ridden, none was ever taken exactly the same way twice. The riders encountered untold number of hazards to their personal safety along the way, and one area where what they started off with came up lacking was boots. Western wear, as we think of it now, was something that came along a bit later than all this. Yes, folks occupying the area were certainly not dressed in the same style as those back east- western apparel began to develop as soon as people encountered the living conditions of being out on the range or in one of these railroad towns, especially early on.

To get to cowboy apparel, a few more cowboys were going to be needed on the scene. It certainly can be seen in the development of cowboy boots, which are about as classic as it gets! Getting back to the story, most of the men early on were simply wearing military riding boots, as worn in the civil war. These boots lacked a pointed toe, a stacked heel, and a high stiff shaft that we think of as belonging to the cowboy boot. These features came along when an inventive rider took stock of what was lacking in his footwear and went about having something done about the situation. He commissioned a pair of custom boots with all of these features from a maker either in Kansas or Texas (the story varies) and the first pair of cowboy boots was born. From there, the popularity of the boot spread. The earliest traveling salespeople of such boots would literally go around tracing feet and taking measurements to return with to the makers for each pair of boots constructed. It would still be a while before boots would be made and sold on a ready to wear market.

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