The Cowboy Hat is the most iconic and recognized clothing accessory in the world. No matter where I go, wearing a cowboy hat is sure to mark me as part of America’s Western culture. Sure, there are a few places outside of the U.S. where cowboy hats thrive, but even when they put their own spin on the hat such as we see in the outback styles of Australia, they all owe their origins to the Cowboy culture of the American West.
However, the American Cowboy was not the first to adopt the idea of a wide brimmed hat as precursors of the Mexican sombrero can be traced back to the early 15th century in Spain, while it’s more modern version probably originated with the Mestizo cowboys in Central Mexico. Additionally, Mongolian horseback riders were known to wear wide brimmed hats as early as the 13th century. As the Mestizo cowboys, or vaqueros, move north through Mexico they brought with them the time-tested methods of Spanish cattle ranching which would become the basis for new cowboys coming West from the newly settled Eastern states. This southwestern style of Cowboy (the buckaroo) would become profoundly influential throughout the West and it is generally believed that it is from these influences that the idea for the first cowboy hat was conceived.
When settlers first started moving West they brought with them the hats that were standard wear in the Eastern states and in Europe. Those hats ran the full gamut from top hats and bowlers to bonnets and soldier caps and the coonskin hats of the frontier and mountain men. But all of these are short brimmed hats or lack a brim altogether; and while they may have been fashionable and/or functional in the Eastern territories and states, the settlers, particularly those who spent a lot of time outdoors under the sun and rain, would have quickly discovered that the typical hats of the day simply weren’t ideal for work in the Western territories.
All of this changed in 1865 when J.B. Stetson designed a new hat that he called the “Boss of the Plains.” Now, John Stetson was a generational hatmaker, having grown up in New Jersey under the tutelage of his father. Sometime in his 20s, which would have been the 1850s, John Stetson was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Fearing the worst, he set out to seek a some adventure in the West, going to Missouri, and later Colorado. Along the way he would have been exposed to the rapidly growing cattle trade as he crossed several of the major trails. Eventually returning to Philadelphia, Stetson would invent the first cowboy hat based on his experiences. That first hat was essentially a modified sombrero made of beaver felt with a four inch crown and a four inch wide brim and was an instant success for Stetson, selling as fast as they could make them.
As the Stetson hat quickly spread across the plains into the West and Southwest and became a staple for ranchers everywhere, styles and ways of wearing the hat began to evolve. Brims would go from the stock flat shape they shipped with to the curved shapes we typically see today and the basic round crown would develop pinches for ease of handling and for style. In fact, it got to be where you could tell what region, and even what specific ranch, a cowboy was from just by the style of his hat. Eventually, with the rise of the Western movie in Hollywood, and with famous travelling acts such as Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, the Cowboy hat would enter the popular culture as a mainstay of Western Americana.
Today the cowboy hat symbolizes that unique aspect of American culture embodying the Western ethos of individualism, adventure, courage, and what we call the Cowboy spirit – that code of the west that defines a particular strata of men and women who continue to live, to some degree or another, the Cowboy lifestyle. Men and women who still work the land, work cattle and livestock, ride horses, ride rodeos, and so on. Maybe it’s just a bit of two-step on date nights, country western on the radio, or a dream of getting out of the office and under open sky. Regardless, the cowboy hat is our iconic symbol.
