Legend Posing As History

paper on the history of cowboy boot styles, manufacture, and companies

• Ramon de Ortega: Old Man Justin and Hyer’s little shack

• extreme even when standards for western history were lax

• The idea that two men outfitted a generation of cowboys defies logic.

• 1868-1886: height of Texas-Kansas cattle trails
• census abstracts

• stogy boots (work boots)

• granger boots (farmer’s boots)

• newspaper advertisements
• even academic historians repeating that modified British racing boots
• myths from company histories

• Neither the Hyer Boot Company nor the Justin Boot Company actually claimed the invention of the boot, but company advertising ha required careful reading for the truth.

• each claimed to be biggest and oldest
• both took about five years off their founding dates
• journalists compounded exaggerations
• soon after deaths of founders, tall tales got taller

• After Hyer closed in 1978, competition between the companis cooled and Hyer’s legend faded.

• Justin used New York PR firm Ruder-Finn

• The obvious fact is that neither Hyer nor Justin “invented” the cowboy boot.

• both opened shops late in the era
• components
  • high heel
  • cut below knee
  • side seams on legs
• less important
  • pull straps
  • decorative stitching
  • toe shape

• in the 1910s when the entertainment industry demanded fancier boots and industrialization made such decorations viable

• the nineteenth-century boot was a rather plain affair

• no single originator

• combination of parts long popular in Europe

• English fashion for Wellington Boot and Hessian Boot
• Wellington
  • worn under pants
  • piped side seams
  • one-inch straight heels
  • square toes
  • tape pull straps
  • optional V-cut behind knee
• 1868: Wellington out of fashion, now short ankle boots
• US: trousers stuffed loosely in tops
• pictures of cowboys with pants inside
• Hessian Boots
  • aka Austrian Boots
  • v-dip cut
  • tassels
  • popular before Wellingtons
  • out of fashion by 1840s
  • longer in the US
• heel not from Spain
  • just one of several European countries favoring narrow, underslung riding heels
• Californios and vaqueros used botas soft leggings over pants
• tapaderos don’t require high heels or stiff boots for protection
• east of Rockies, used bow stirrup requiring heels and protection

• He wore his leg protection (sturdy boot legs and chaps) on his body rather than on his saddle as vaqueros did.

• bootmakers had ties to Britain and German-speaking states
• heel likely from Northern Europe
• Justin and Hyer ads focused on the past

• As the post-Civil War United States changed rapidly into an urbanized, industrialized, and increasingly immigrant society, nostalgia began to glorify the rural, independent, handworker who typified American values.

• Hyer’s advertising copy and catalogs used an accurate origin of 1880 until after the deaths of the founders.

• Lucchese claimed 37 years, one month later Justin advertised 40
• Hyer was acknowledged as older than Justin
• Justn and Hyer celebrated anniversaries prematurely

• lived parallel lives

  • midwesterners
  • born to German immigrants
  • help from brothers
• hyperbole: biggest shoe shop in the world
• family sold Hyer in 1968
• bough by Ben Miller, maer of Larry Mahan collection
• Miller closed the Olathe factory
• employees bought the equipment
• Olathe Boot Company
• Justin
  • shotgun town
  • moved to Nocona when town went bust
  • 1916 retired
  • Nocona merged in 1980s

• each maintained a mail-order custom line

• measure own feet
• national ad campaigns reaching working cowboys
• Wyoming Stockman-Farmer

• Both are credited with building the first boots of any kind on left and right lasts.

• lots of evidence of that before them

• During the Civil War, the standard ankle boot issued to Union enlisted men, the Jefferson bootee, was a lace-up shoe made in factories on right and left lasts.

• J. Sparkes Hall, shoe historian
• legend: each invented self-measuring system
• trace feet, tape measure ball, low instep, high instep, heel, small ankle, leg, height of boot or shoe
• enclosed tape measures

• emphasize self-reliance, independence, and innovation

• western boot making was an adaptation of eastern systems

• maintained different sizing systems for twenty years
• 1886: retailers formed national association to impose standard sizing, mailed it to all manufacturers in the country
• earlier El Paso bootmaker advertised self-measurement

• Neither the Hyer Boot Company nor the Justin Boot Company invented the left/right shoe, the self-measuring system, or the cowboy boot.

• biggest obstacle: recruiting skilled bootmakers

• prospered by adapting factory methods of shoemaking to the custom cowboy boot trade

• adaptation of factory methods and factory profits to maintain their custom lines

• not by being the first but by being the most adaptable