Don't Mess with the Cowboy's Hat
By Dr. Richard W. Slatta, the Cowboy Professor at North Carolina State University
Along with his boots, a cowboy's hat is one of his most distinguishing features. The utility of a broad-brimmed hat is immediately obvious to anyone who has spent a day in one of the semi-arid regions of the ranching frontier. The hat protects the wearer's head, face, and neck from the sun's heat and glare. It keeps the rain out of his eyes. Held down around his ears with a rawhide thong, it protects against freezing weather. In short, the hat helped keep the cowboy from frying or freezing, depending on the whims of the weather. Many early Texas cowboys adopted the venerable Spanish sombrero (literally a "shader," sombra is Spanish for shade). The hat has a flat crown and a wide, flat brim. Also called the poblano, these hats came from Spain and continue to be used there. They worked well in the hot ranges of north Mexico. Wealthier Spaniards had their hats embellished with silver conchos and silver or gold braid.
The Mexican variation of the sombrero added an even wider brim and a high, conical crown. These are the hats worn by mariachi musicians and charros. They are too large, heavy, and unwieldy for ranch work. Both types of sombreros usually include a barboquejo or chin strap. Cowboys would adopt and generalize the word sombrero to mean just about any broad-brimmed hat. Hat making is one part; another part science. The brims on early, cheap American-made hats often lacked rigidity. Some were made from wool, which could not be stiffened. Such low-quality headgear marked the wearer as part of the "wool-hat bunch," not a compliment. Thus we associate slouch hats with floppy brims with the early Texas cowhands who could not afford the more elegant shaped sombreros. Some cowboys pinned the front brim back to keep it out of their eyes. Hands with a little more money would purchase better quality headgear. As one journalist put it in 1874, cowboys wore "a slouch felt hat of great width of brim, often a genuine Mexican sombrero." With the advent of the great Texas trail drives, drovers began demanding better quality, more serviceable equipment, including a better pair of boots and a better "hair case." John Batterson Stetson (1830-1906), a New Jersey-born hat manufacturer came to the rescue. He had learned his trade from his family. Like many other easterners, he first traveled West for his health. This combination of western experience and family skills came together in the most famous cowboy hats of all, the Stetson. He designed a large, broad-brimmed "ten-gallon hat" and began manufacturing them in Philadelphia in 1865. His attention to quality and durability quickly established his company as the leading hat manufacturer in the country.
Here's a picture of your friendly author in his handsome Stetson. Stetson made hats, usually from felt, of varying price and quality. Felt from rabbit or beaver fur provided the raw material for his hats. The 5X and 7X beaver were the finest quality hats available to the oldtime cowboy. Later inflation would strike the beaver X scale. At one time a 20X meant 100 percent beaver felt. Today, however, you can purchase a 30X or even jump to a 100X beaver at a cost of a thousand dollars or more. A good John B. might cost a month's wages, but it would last a lifetime.
Cowboys added their own individual and regional variations by creasing the crown or adding distinctive hat bands. Some of the creases gained names, so that today you might favor the Cattleman, centerfire, two dot, peak, Montana or Foreman crease. Likewise, brims can take on a rode, ranch, snap, or Aussie look. Stetson also paid attention to style, creating a wide range of styles. His followed up his early Boss of the Plains with a great range of popular styles. The Carlsbad proved extremely popular among cowboys, and the Buckeye stood even higher and wider than the original Boss. By the time of his death in 1906, Stetson was selling two million hats per year worldwide. His name had become synonymous with cowboy hats. Hat evolution continued in the twentieth century, with Stetson's Tom Mix and Columbia styles, and many more. As in the boot industry that followed Justin's lead, competitors joined in the hat business. American Hat, Resistol, Bailey, and others joined in. Today far more pilgrims wear cowboy hats than do cowboys. Some hands, ever individualists, have even switched over to baseball caps. Wilfred Blevins tells the story of a tourist who asked a cowboy in Jackson Hole why he was wearing a baseball cap instead of a cowboy hat. The hand replied, "Don' wanna look like a goddam truck driver."
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