Art of the Boot
by Tyler BeardGIBBS SMITH
Cowboy boots can be a narcotic for the neophyte cowboy wanna-be. Boots from the dawn of high-heeled footwear have always evoked a certain sensual connotation that extends to sexuality. The beauty of cowboy boots is that they are genderless. They can be worn by anyone, with anything, for any occasion—or “with nothing at all” … And so this love affair with the “soul” of the American cowboy, forever ingrained in our hearts, continues into the twenty-first century.
After years of research, it has become clear that there was no “first” pair of cowboy boots—nowhere to begin the story of how the cowboy boot developed. As far back as we know, horsemen throughout the ages, all over the world, preferred higher-heeled boots. This represented a sign of nobility or a profession on horseback, above the ground, hence the old adage “well heeled.”
Boots by Little’s Boot Company. Photo © 1999 by Jim Arndt
For millenniums, horsemen have relied on protective footwear—from Attila the Hun in the fifth century, the Moors in the eighth, Genghis Khan in the twelfth, to Spain and Europe through the nineteenth century—man, his boots, and his horse have been inexorably linked in history, legend, myth, and our imaginations.
Cattle ranching in the United States existed as early as 1767, when Indians and Mexicans on horseback were engaged by Franciscan missionaries to work cattle in California. In Texas, cattle ranching began around 1820. Yet the legendary cowboy and his lifestyle did not set roots until the spring of 1867, when the incomplete transcontinental railroad reached Abilene, Kansas. A twenty-nine-year-old livestock trader, Joe McCoy, had purchased a large portion of Abilene, Kansas, for $4,250 and advertised for men in Texas to drive longhorns on the open range up to this Kansas railhead. At $40 a head, this was ten times higher than the going rate for cattle that currently existed in the hide and tallow market. By the end of this first summer, herds of 2,000 and 3,000 head or more arrived along the Chisholm Trail. The beef industry had been established. McCoy was the first cattle king, and the cowboy boot—the single icon that best represents America around the world—was being born.
Before and after the Civil War, cowboys wore whatever they could afford or what they walked away from the war in. Early daguerreotype photographs show groups of cowboys wearing a sundry of clothing and footwear. Cowboys wore all kinds of boots, one example being the Wellington, a boot of British origin dating from 1810 and popularized by Arthur Wellsley, the first duke of Wellington, following his defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. The Wellington boot is usually described as a plain boot commonly in black leather or sometimes brown. Typically these boots had side seams, one-inch stacked straight heels, square or slightly rounded toes, and leather pull-on straps. There was usually no decorative stitching. The tops were either cut straight across or curved slightly higher in the front. The Wellington was basically utilitarian footwear that sprang from British influence and immigration.
Cowboys were also wearing at this time the Hessian boot, an under-the-knee boot with a V-cut in the front. This boot was introduced in England about 1785 by German dandies imitating the military footwear of the Hessian soldiers, named after the city-state of Hesse. Because Hessian soldiers fought in the American Revolutionary War, this style actually received some popularity before the Wellington. Some of the original Hessian boots were distinguished by a large silk or leather tassel that hung down in the V-cut in the front of the boot. This military detail was not popular with cowboys, but its influences are still evident today in the short-top boots worn by high school and college drum majorettes and drill teams. In the most famous photograph of Billy the Kid, circa 1879, he is shown with his trousers tucked in, wearing a medium-high-heeled Hessian boot with its typical front V-cut (minus the tassel) and with pull straps flopping on the outside of the boot.
We know that by 1870 John Cubine, in Coffeyville, Kansas, had combined the Wellington and military-style boots in what is known today as the Coffeyville-style boot. The Coffeyville boot is usually described as not having a specific right or left foot; as being constructed from unlined, waxed, flesh-side out leather, usually in black; having leather pull straps, a low Cuban heel, slightly rounded square toes, a fully pegged sole; and the front of the boot, or the “graft,” being considerably higher than the back. Not always but usually the graft was a different color of leather—brown or a deep red. Accounts from the time describe Coffeyville boots made for Texas cowboys with a cutout five-point lone star inlaid in the center of the graft. There is no reason to doubt that these star-styled Coffeyville boots were made; Texas cowboys were having Texas stars put on everything. Yet not one example of this boot from the 1860s or ’70s is known to exist.
An 1860s newspaper reporter described seeing the lone star emblem in the cow towns:
Everywhere starred and shone the lone star of Texas for the cowboy. Wherever he may wander and however he may change, never spends his money or lends his presence to a concern that does not in some way recognize the emblem of his native state. So you will see in towns like New Sharon a general pandering to this sentiment. And lone stars abound of all sizes and hues, from the big disfiguring white one painted on the hotel front down to the little pink one stitched in silk on the cowboy’s shilling handkerchief.
Boots by Little’s Boot Company. Photo © 1999 by Jim Arndt
Throughout the 1860s and ’70s, these various military-style boots continued to be copied in hundreds of variations, modified and sometimes improved upon by the gone-to-Texas southerners, who also brought with them the refined European cavalier-style ancestry of boot making, with its higher heel and finer leathers. During these times, heel shapes and boot heights varied greatly. Toes were usually of round or square duck-bill shapes that might be as wide as three inches. Stitching on the boot tops for support or decoration was actually fairly rare, and wrinkles, toe bugs, or flowers stitched on the toe tops were unheard of.
One myth should be put to bed. Having looked at literally thousands of photographs of early cowboys, I have never seen one pair of boots or shoes with a pointed toe. We cannot say there was never a cowboy who wore this style of toe design; however, no pair exists. Every single pair of cowboy boots that I have seen from the 1860s through the 1930s had either a medium-to-wide round or square toe. Not until the 1940s, when streamlining was the fashion of the day, did the cowboy boot toe dramatically change shape. The pointy, sharp, cockroach-killer variety did not appear until the late 1950s, then remained popular as “the” toe for men, women, and children throughout the sixties and a large part of the seventies.
In 1870 the U.S. Census recorded 121 boot- and shoe-making establishments in Kansas and 98 in Texas. Most of these shops were also making stovepipe stogie boots (work boots), ranger boots (farmers’ boots), cavalry-style boots, lace-up boots and shoes, and a wide variety of footwear for the general populace. But historical photographs, newspaper advertisements, town histories, and personal diaries tell us that many of these shops were specializing in boots for cowboys and ranchers.
By the 1880s, a more characteristic boot was being developed with a four-piece construction and stovepipe top (which means the front and back of the boot were the same height). Some simple decorative stitch patterns were beginning to emerge, and the high heel was becoming much more popular.
Concerning the ongoing dispute between Kansas and Texas historians as to which state made the first pair of cowboy boots or made the most or the best—the answer is neither. The assumption that cowboys got paid at the end of the trail at the rail heads in Kansas and therefore had the money to order a pair of boots is only one possible scenario. I am sure that once they reached town, this rough form of civilization with shops, home-cooked meals, saloons, gambling, soiled doves, and a virtual kaleidoscope of distractions, the last thing on many a cowboy’s mind was his boots! Like anyone leaving on a trip, vacation, or adventure, it seems more feasible to me that the cowboy would have considered his boots, gear, and tools before heading north. That there were more boot, shoe, and saddle shops in Kansas at this time also reflects the fact that the Midwest had a much greater population, with trade and commerce crisscrossing the state.
The historical facts do show, however, that the most influential boot makers in Kansas and Texas pre-1900 were primarily of German or British descent. (The Italian shoe- and boot-making influences of Tony Lama and the Lucchese family and others were felt after the turn of the century.) The fact that boot makers and shoemakers were spread throughout the Great Plains as early as 1868 does not diminish the indisputable fact that Charles Hyer of Hyer Brothers Boots in Olathe, Kansas, and “Big Daddy Joe” Justin of Justin Boots in Spanish Fort, Texas, were the two most influential boot makers of the 1880s.
A new post-Civil War America was emerging. This immigrant-based society with its newfound urbanization and industrialization were changing the face of the country. H. Dean Hyer of C. H. Hyer and Sons, founded in 1874 and one of the oldest boot-making establishments in the West, had this to say about their early customers: “We do know that we have made boots in the past for many people who had no connection with the cattle business other than being in an area where this was the main industry. In the 1870s, almost everyone still rode a horse, so it would not be uncommon at all for the U.S. marshal, stage drivers, gamblers, prospectors, and common townspeople to be buying tall-topped boots.”
By the late 1880s, the general public was already reminiscing over the loss of the Old West, and by the turn of the century, the cowboy stood alone as the most picturesque figure in the nation. His profession had changed little since the 1860s. His range, corrals, cattle pens and cow trails were far from the patted-down town roads and city pavement. Cowboys were still out there pounding dirt into dust, mud into muck, or snow into slush. A cowboy’s best friends were his horse and saddle, a rope, a hat, a crackling fire to warm his work-weary feet, and his cowboy boots.
As the open ranges of the southern plains were closed and the spiny fingers of railroad tracks expanded, the American cowboy still had a job to do, but it was now within the confines of a large ranch or cattle concern. It was a long horseback ride into town—sometimes several hundred miles. But in the late 1880s, both Justin and Hyer revived nostalgic visions of their one-man shop origins along the cattle trails to help promote their mail-order line of cowboy boots, thus solving the distance problem and making it convenient for folks out on the ranch to get boots delivered right to their homes.
In these earliest mail-order catalogs, cowboy boot prices varied from $3 to $25. The average boot sold for $3 to $12, depending on the hide used, height of the boot, toe, heel, stitching, and any other particulars the cowboy may have requested.
One event that helped promote the mail-order cowboy boot business was that in 1896 the U.S. Congress authorized free postal delivery in rural areas (RFD), which brought the mail directly to the farmer, rancher, and cowboy. By 1911, post offices were offering personal post with a C.O.D. charge, which further simplified these transactions between the boot maker and the cowboy.
There was no other footwear in the 1890s and early 1900s that could have provided as much protection and practical application as the tall-top, high-heeled cowboy boot. This boot provided year-round protection from mud, snow, gravel, brush, thorn, and horn, allowing the cowboy to always keep one thickness between his pants and his leg. Changes and improvements, for fashion or utility, were always being made. Heels went from low to high, to low, and back to high again. Toes were varying widths in square and round shapes. Some soles were thick, while others were thin, and the tops were either plain or decorated with colored leather and stitching. These changes were made to satisfy the individual’s vanity, a boot maker’s whimsy, or to improve safety and efficiency. The end result, given personal preference, was a perfect tool for the feet used in a very special way.
One of these decorative whimsies was the introduction of the toe wrinkle. They may not have been the first to stitch them on some boot toes, but in 1903 the Hyer Brothers catalog was the first to advertise toe wrinkles—the straight stitch lines across the top of the toe. There is no way to absolutely trace the origin of this addition to the cowboy boot, but we do know that by about 1915, most boot makers were offering their own toe bug, wrinkle, or flower. By now a delicate curved, floral, or fleur-de-lis shape was usually added in front of the strait bar lines of the wrinkles. This personalized signature in thread, of each boot maker’s design, remains an element on most manufactured as well as custom-made boots to this day.
Cowboy boots rose to a fashion high as a byproduct of the entertainment industry’s success with the cowboy hero. The 1920s and 1930s West of the that many of our grandparents and great-grandparents spoke about nostalgically was kept alive through radio shows and movie serials featuring the likes of Tim McCoy, William S. Hart, Bronco Billy, Jack Hoxie, Buck Jones, Ken Maynard, Hoot Gibson, Tom Mix, and the list goes on and on. None of these tough hombres would have been caught dead without his boots on. These Hollywood idols were the springboard for the fashion-vs.-function “anything goes” cowboy boot styles of this period.
More than any other entertainment star, Tom Mix had the greatest influence on western wear and boots, especially as an emerging style for the masses. Tom was a sexy sight in his high-heeled inlaid boots and silver and jeweled spurs. He was the Tom Cruise of his time. When Mix died in a car accident on October 12, 1940, he was wearing black patent-leather boots with a floral design stitched in red, white, and blue silk thread. This working cowboy, stuntman, and movie star had cowboy class with a capital “C.”
During the next twenty-five years, cowboy boot designs became increasingly intricate and colorful. Most boot pairs were symmetrical mirror images: the outside matched the inside of the partner boot in reverse. Some of the new abstract designs that had been devised from floral images, leaves, tulips, roses, scrolls, and flame patterns were now being incorporated in ever-increasing colors and variations. Spider webs, hair-on longhorn heads, cactus pears, eagles in flight, horses, horse shoes, bucking broncs, oil derricks, decks of cards, crescent moons surrounded by stars, and endless varieties of butterflies, eagles, flowers, and vines all but replaced the simpler inlaid boots of the 1920s and early thirties.
In the post-World War II years, entertainment was requisite for war-weary Americans. By now the Wild West shows were over, so the old-time ranch rodeos became, instead, organized town and city sporting events. Boots became much more than protection against rattlesnakes, mesquite thorns, cacti, inclement weather, saddle chafing, or even a means to hold up a pair of working spurs. This was show business. The entertainers in these events realized the need to exaggerate the styles and colors of their costumes in order to be seen from the grandstands. Styles that featured simple collars with inlaid stars, moons, hearts, card suits, diamonds, ranch brands, and simple initials were now considered “old boot.” The rodeo and dude ranch phenomenon, accompanied by the impact of cowboy crooners such as Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, along with the Nashville country music scene, were keys to the mass appeal that put cowboy boots on the feet of people of all ages, in all states, in all professions.
The Big Five—Justin, Tony Lama, Nocona, Hyer, and Acme—began to crank out millions of pairs to satisfy this first wave of national cowboy-boot mania.
Looking back, it is logical to consider 1940 to 1965 as the golden age of boot making. This was the time when boot makers pushed all the limits of their imagination and skill. During this period, western clothing crossed all gender boundaries more than in any previous decade. Boots were being made in a variety of shapes, colors, styles and leathers unimaginable only a generation before.
In the 1960s, John Wayne was competing with the Beatles for the admiration of American youth. Western heroes and western style took a backseat for awhile, it seems. Boots took on a more conservative appearance; the sharp narrow box toe and the needle nose were all the rage. Heels were lower, walking style, and flat. The bright colors and inlaid designs were no longer popular; nor were short-top peewees. The cowboy boot industry prevailed as a fashion classic throughout the sixties and into the era of the hippie and the moccasin craze.
The 1970s rolled along with few changes in the cowboy boot. Toes were still basically pointed. The leisure suit and polyester influence had the tanneries in a fluster trying to match those weird bright and powdery colors. Toes began to round out a little bit more. The “h”- and “j”-shaped toes were the most popular by the mid-seventies.
In 1980 the movie Urban Cowboy was released, starring John Travolta. The redneck hippie look of the late 1970s was suddenly replaced with redneck chic. In the same year, Sandra Kauffman’s Cowboy Catalog Book was released, giving full instructions in the buying and wearing of cowboy boots and all things western to city dwellers and wanna-be urban cowboys. During this craze, the boot factories and all custom boot makers were inundated with orders, backing them up years. This was the equivalent to a major gold strike if you were in the boot business in the early 1980s. In 1981 Texas Boots was released, the first book of its kind dedicated solely to the cowboy boot. The emphasis was to expose the new mass market of boot wearers to the custom boot makers in Texas, a clear message that a shelf model designed by a total stranger, available in standard stock sizes at the western-wear store, was not the only way to go.
Boots by Jay Griffith; courtesy Caroline Shapiro Collection.
Photo © 1999 by Jim Arndt
By 1985, however, like all trends, the urbane cowboy had ridden off into the sunset. The paddle-footed, two-tone pale and pastel boots of the early 1980s were now passe. Two 1985 movies—Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise wearing a pair of vintage inlaid boots, and Silverado, which was the stepping-off point for fashion boots in the entertainment industry—seemed to reignite a genuine interest in classic cowboy boot styles of the 1890s to the 1950s. It was during this time—the mid-1980s—that anything western, especially cowboy boots, was being sold at a frenetic pace worldwide. The vintage boot stores in New York and up and down Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles were going great guns selling nothing but vintage boots and copies of boots from the golden age of boot making. The retro cowboy boot stampede had begun, and a renaissance of boot making was well underway by 1991, finally challenging the creativity and artisanship of the golden age.
In 1992 The Cowboy Boot Book was released. Boot aficionados now had a new boot bible to study by. Its positive influence on the boot industry shocked not only its originators but the entire boot industry, sending customers scurrying to their favorite boot makers to order boots directly designed from, or inspired by, designs featured in the book.
My hat’s off to every man or woman who ever made a pair of cowboy boots. I have nothing but complete respect for anyone who chooses, or is driven, to create custom cowboy footwear from raw sheets of leather and hide. The ultimate tribute to these great American boot makers is the sheer fact they have been able to earn a living, whether on Main Street, in a basement, a shed, or a converted garage. The grateful, patient stream of customers over any length of a boot maker’s career is the absolute testament that they are doing something right.
People often ask if boot making is a dying art. My reply is always a resounding, “No!” Just in the past few years, the population of boot makers across the country has nearly doubled. It is always heartening to learn through numerous letters and phone calls that The Cowboy Boot Book was the “sole” inspiration for launching many a new bookmaker’s career. A poignant example dated July 8, 1995:
Dear Mr. Beard,
My name is Deaon Hockley from Fowler, Indiana. I am thirteen years old and quite interested in learning boot making, and thanks to you and the book you wrote I’ve been in contact with some of the boot makers getting tips and pointers on boot making. We will be traveling to Texas in the next couple of weeks so I can meet and talk with some of them personally. We plan to be at the Boot and Saddle makers Roundup in Brownwood, Texas. I hope to meet you and some of the boot makers in the book, so I can get them to autograph it. Thanking you in advance.
Deaon Hockley
Bear in mind that while it may have been the book that exposed these budding boot makers to this leather craft of cowboy boot making, without more than 150 years of boot makers and boot companies, there would have been no stories to tell and nothing to inspire awe. In reality, there is a book in each and every boot maker’s life: the whys, whens, and what fors; the woes, long hours, and yippie-ei-os; the lean and flush years, the wasted leathers; the steady stream of apprentices that can’t hack it and pack it in. I hope their stories are being recorded to preserve these verbal fragments of American history and folklore. Visiting an older boot maker’s shop can be an experience in itself. When the memories dim and the legends transcend into myth, a warning sign over the shop door should read, “Keep your boots on, tuck in your britches. It gets deep in here.”
The most frequent question I am asked is “Who is the best boot maker?” That’s like asking “Who is the best artist who ever lived?” Any answer would be subjective. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and certainly this applies to cowboy boots. It all depends on how one sees art. Artistry is a word that applies to the quality of workmanship in every handmade pair of boots. There has never been, nor will there ever be, a “best” boot artist.
For example, Ray Jones from Lampasas, Texas, (now deceased) has been referred to innumerable times as “the boot makers’ boot maker.” I love Ray Jones boots. They were tough as hell, plain-to-average in description, with only two choices of stitch pattern. Most folks never saw the second choice because Ray didn’t like it. You had to be on your second pair to ensure perfect fit before Ray could even be begged to inlay a few initials. I never heard a boot maker say that Ray Jones was the best, but plenty of ranchers and cowmen thought he was; his boots were utilitarian for the most part. A boot maker’s pride is in the customers: if they consistently order from one maker, they must think that boot maker is the best.
But if you ask three hundred boot makers the best way to make a pair of cowboy boots, you will get three hundred different sets of instructions. And most of them preface with, “My way is the right way.”
With the exception of a handful of boot factory owners, there probably are not any wealthy custom boot makers. It doesn’t take a math whiz to do the math. At the end of the century, the average base price of a pair of custom-made cowboy boots is $450 and up—sometimes way up, depending on the maker. Forget about exotics; for a basic calfskin boot, materials alone can run $50 to $100, depending on the quality of the skin. You get what you pay for. It takes the boot maker thirty to forty hours to complete this pair of boots. Figure the hourly wage: it’s probably less than average.
Unquestionably, plain brown and black boots with a twelve-inch shaft, three-to-six rows of stitching, low walking heels, and rounded toes far outsell what you’ll see in this book. Quality is measured slowly when the product is entirely handmade. I suppose I have seen and handled, collected, bought and sold a greater variety of cowboy boots than anyone else in the world. Each and every time I think I’ve seen it all, some son of a boot maker boot will come along and pitch me right off center, throw me for a boot loop with some new idea, design, toe, or technique. Starry-eyed and boot bleary, words sometimes fail me, but I never fail to admire the artistry—and always end up wanting another pair of new boots.
Featured in this book are some of the more artistic and imaginative cowboy boots to come down the trail. In the mix is an assortment of vintage cowboy boots ranging from the late 1800s through the 1960s. These will surely whet the appetites of boot wearers, makers, aficionados, connoisseurs, and collectors, as well as win a whole new clientele of first-time custom-boot buyers. This confetti of color, design, and skill, I feel, have finally pushed the boot boundary far beyond the golden age of boot making (1940 to 1965) to a new level of platinum—1988 and forward.
At the turn of this century, the cowboy boot will be more than 150 years old. Has it changed much? Yes and no. Recently, there has been a wave of interest in period boots of the late-nineteenth century. Some makers are even fully pegging their soles (no stitching). Requests for high tops, higher heels, angled Cuban heels, no stitching up top, or a simple single row or two and a wide variety of squared-off early toe styles has become something of a trend, and it’s not the old-timers making these requests—it’s the young cowboys. As in the late 1980s and early nineties, anything still goes.
“What’s new in cowboy boots?” you ask. Plenty!
First off, women are slowly moving to the forefront of custom cowboy-boot making. The number of women enrolled in boot-making schools and fulfilling apprenticeships has quadrupled since 1992. While women have always been a driving force behind many a boot maker, and a large percentage of boot tops have been stitched by women, the new thing is the advent of women owning their own shops and making their boots from beginning to end. In this male-dominated profession, it seems that the survival of a woman boot maker is a rare and precious thing.
The “first lady” of cowboy boot making, Enid Justin (sister of the Justin brothers; started Nocona Boot Company in 1925) never made a complete pair of boots herself, but she knew as well as any boot maker how a boot should be made—an important factor when you are the owner and president of one of top five boot manufacturing companies in the world. From 1925 to 1980, no women had their own boot shops. Enid died in 1990 at age ninety-six, and if she were still around she would be so proud of how far women have come.
Melody Dawkins has the distinction of being the first woman to own her own boot shop. She represents the fifth generation in a long line of shoe and boot-repair shop owners from North Carolina. She grew up in the repair business in Porterville, California, and already owned her own repair shop when she got an itch to learn the full process of making a cowboy boot. After six months in Oklahoma in 1980 learning the craft, Melody had the ability to make a complete pair of boots from beginning to end. She now resides in Palm Springs, California, where she maintains her own business as well as teaching shoe and boot making at the local Calypatra Prison.
Then came second-generation boot maker Deanna McGuffin. She began to learn boot making from her father, New Mexico boot legend L. W. McGuffin, in his shop in 1981. In addition to crafting fine boots, Deanna has been teaching boot making for several years.
At the moment, fewer than a half-dozen women are making a full-time living as boot makers in the United States, but this number is bound to increase. Keep your eyes on the women!
Some of what’s new in boots has never been seen before—100 percent original. Other trends may have been inspired by a single detail or embellished, or perhaps just few earlier examples of a particular idea or design are known to exist.
The first noticeably new trend after 1993 was an increased interest in hand-carved leather boot tops. In the past, floral designs and the occasional cowboy on a bronc were the limit. But now, saddle makers and leather-crafts people are being called upon to tool tops of every description—portraits of loved ones and pets, a favorite boat or classic automobile, pictorial storytelling from top to bottom and toe to heel. More and more, these designs, as well as the classic floral patterns, are being hand-painted and -stained in a rainbow of colors for visual impact and emphasis on minute details.
Suddenly, hand-beaded boots began to pop up; then varying techniques and styles of machine embroidery came on the scene; rhinestone boots are back; studded boots; long mule ears with sterling silver conchos; ornate stitching and inlays; then the ancient art of pitiado was revived. We are seeing gold, diamonds, silver, prehistoric mammoth tusk, ancient coins, and precious stones set into boot leather to create wearable cowboy-boot jewelry.
This new zenith in cowboy boot artistry since 1993 has placed us in the eye of the platinum age of boot making. Boot makers and wearers have accepted the challenge to go where no boots have gone before. The cowboy boots offered up now are not only footwear but sculptures in leather, a cornucopia to challenge your imagination, tug at your heartstrings, touch your senses, leave you speechless and gasping for breath, and finally, leave your toes twitchin’ and your dogs barkin’ in exquisite longing for a new pair, a lulu of a pair, a tattoo for the feet and soul of the great events in your life, your dreams, your hopes, your loves, your future, something that would knock your granny down and make your mama cry.
Long live the cowboy boot and its makers!
