page_title: Cowboy boot
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Cowboy boot / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Lottie Briscoe wears a corduroy western dress, boots, and a cowboy hat in a 1914 publicity still for the Lubin silent film series The Beloved Adventurer (1914).
context_page_description: Cowboy boots refer to a specific style of riding boot, historically worn by cowboys. They have a high heel that is traditionally made of stacked leather, rounded to pointed toe, high shaft, and, traditionally, no lacing. Cowboy boots are normally made from cowhide leather, which may be decoratively hand tooled, but are also sometimes made from "exotic" skins like alligator, snake, ostrich, lizard, eel, elephant, stingray, elk, buffalo, and so on.
  There are two basic styles of cowboy boots, western, and roper. The classic style is distinguished by a tall boot shaft, going to at least mid-calf, with an angled "cowboy" heel, usually over one inch high. A slightly lower, still angled, "walking" heel is also common. The toe of western boots was originally rounded or squared in shape. The narrow pointed toe design appeared in the early 1940s.
  A newer design, the "roper" style, has a short boot shaft that stops above the ankle but before the middle of the calf, with a very low and squared-off "roper" heel, shaped to the sole of the boot, usually less than one inch high.
context_section_description: Riding boots had been a part of equestrian life for centuries.  Until the industrial age, boots were individually handmade in many different styles, depending on culture. Early cowboy boot designs, along with other cowboy accouterments, were also heavily influenced by the vaquero tradition imported from Spain to the Americas, dating back to the early 16th century. Military boots designed for cavalry riders also had an influence. Mexican vaqueros probably developed a cowboy boot from the Spanish riding boots. The Mexican cowboy boots only came in three styles, rounded toe, pointed toe and tribal toes, while the Americans offer much more styles. 
  Later, the Industrial Revolution allowed some styles of boots to be mass-produced.  One mass-produced boot style, the Wellington boot, (a shorter but cavalry-oriented boot) was popular with cowboys in the US until the 1860s.
  During the cattle drive era of 1866–1884, the cowboy was not apt to ruin a good pair of dress boots while working, so some owned more decorative dress boots to wear in town. The basic style elements permeated even working boots, and made the Wellington obsolete. Fashion magazines from 1850 and 1860 show the cowboy boot with top stitching, cutouts of geometric or other natural elements and underslung heel.
  The American-style boot was taken up by bootmakers in the cattle ranching areas of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.  Two of the best known early bootmakers of the era were Charles Hyer of Hyer Brothers Boots in Olathe, Kansas, and H. J. "Daddy Joe" Justin of Justin Boots in Spanish Fort, Texas and later Nocona, Texas. After Justin moved to Fort Worth where shipping was easier, the Nocona brand of cowboy boots was made by Enid Justin Stelzer, eldest daughter of H. J.  Justin, who stayed in Nocona with her husband, and the couple continued the family business. After the couple divorced, the Olsen-Stelzer brand was started by Stelzer.
  T.C. McInerney of Abilene, Kansas, also made the American-style cowboy boot. A picture of this boot is listed in an ad in the Abilene Weekly Chronicle on December 7, 1871.
caption: Lottie Briscoe in 1914 wearing cowboy boots
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