Charles Hyer is credited as the first to invent the cowboy boot. Working cowboys, Roy Rogers, Tom Mix, Clark Gable, Theodore Roosevelt, and Buffalo Bill Cody all wore HYER boots. Now that the boots are back with the relaunch of the famed brand, you can wear them, too.
The story goes that in 1875 in Kansas, a terminus for the busy cattle drives of the era, a cowboy was just coming off his latest cattle drive with a fresh paycheck in his pocket when he strolled into bootmaker C.H. Hyer's shop in Olathe, Kansas, and asked him to make the best boot for the cowboy's job — no matter the cost.
This cowboy said that what he had been riding in needed some improvements more suited for life riding the range, and Hyer, a reported "mad man of boot making," embraced the challenge. He began to innovate certain modifications to the riding boots of the time, which were traditionally more similar to a Hyacinth, a Willington, or an English riding boot. The modifications included a higher heel to prevent a foot from getting stuck in the stirrup, a pointed toe for easier sliding into the stirrup, and a crescent top for getting one's foot into the boot quicker, while also adding comfort when walking. These features, developed by Hyer, would become the distinctive attributes of cowboy boots as we know them today. And the rest, as they say, is history.
But history is complicated.
Fast-forward about a century and a half to 2019. Zach Lawless, great-great grandson of C.H. Hyer, had no idea about the extent of his family legacy. He had heard his relative was largely credited with inventing the cowboy boot, but he thought that was the end of the story where his family was concerned. He assumed the association of the Hyer name with boots ended with that mystery cowboy.
It wasn't until he was cleaning out his grandmother's basement after the passing of his grandfather that Lawless stumbled on old marketing materials of the HYER Boot Company.
"Just by the quality of the material I realized the company that was doing it was doing something special, and I was like, Oh, my God — this is so cool! Why have we never talked about this?"
He went to his grandmother, whose side of the family owned the boot company. "It was honestly as if she had been waiting 50 years for somebody to ask her this question about this boot company, and she just started telling me the most incredible stories," says Lawless.
The stories Lawless was told, along with the research he began to immerse himself in, stretched back across time to the very beginning. He learned that C.H. Hyer, whose father was a shoemaker who had immigrated to the United States from Germany, had originally gone to Kansas to work on the railroad. But he quickly tired of the lice in the bunkhouses and instead took up teaching shoemaking at the Kansas School for the Deaf. Hyer also opened his own shoe shop, which is where that cowboy ended up by 1875.
Word of Hyer's handiwork quickly spread among the cowboys on the trail, and the HYER Boot factory took off.
Shoemaker C.H. Hyer set up shop in the Kansas town of Olathe (pronounced O-Lay'-Tha, the old Shawnee Indian word for beautiful), which served as a stop on the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails and catered to wagons headed West. Plenty of cowboys came through town, too. In 1875, a lone cowboy asked Hyer to make him some footwear for rugged terrain and days on horseback. The boot maker designed something with a pointed toe, raised hell, and scalloped top — and the cowboy boot was born. Word spread and demand and the business grew.
By the 1880s the railroad had made its way to Texas, effectively ending the long-haul cattle drives that had originally contributed to HYER Boots' regular influx of loyal customers, Lawless explains. But Hyer, ever-the-innovator, dove into the mail-order catalog market, allowing customers to utilize measuring charts to determine their shoe size and receive their boots in the mail. The popularity of the boot company only continued to grow.
The Kansas Historical Society details that in the almost 150 years since the first pair of HYER Boots was made to order, many a famous personage has pulled on a pair, including Buffalo Bill Cody, Tom Mix, Will Rogers, and Gene Autry. Other famous folks — Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Loretta Lynn, Marilyn Monroe, and Clark Gable among them — also sported the brand, fanning the flame of its popularity.
As many famous customers as there were, the brand is rumored to have had some infamous ones, too. Jess James is said to have stayed in a hotel above the HYER Boot factory to scout for police as his gang was outfitted in new boots. And Billy the Kid reportedly died in a pair, Lawless says.
The HYER Boots brand eventually became synonymous with the Wild West and became the biggest footwear factory in the country, according to the Kansas Business Hall of Fame.
Early advertising fro C.H. Hyer & Sons and their famed cowboy boots.
When founder C.H. Hyer died in 1921, his son C.A. Hyer took over. In the decades after, business declined. In the 1970s, financial struggles forced the sale of the company, and the subject of the boot company, Lawless says, became a sore spot for the family.
Slowly his grandmother's and mother's family, which had been heavily involved in the Western lifestyle, lost touch with their past, to the point that Lawless was shocked when he uncovered the Hyer heritage in his grandparents' basement.
When Lawless got his grandmother to open up about Hyer Boots, he could immediately see the comfort and joy it brought her. It was then that he resolved to get the family business back.
He tracked down the brand, which had changed hands several times and hadn't been used since the 1990s, and discovered it was now owned by the multinational conglomerate holding company Berkshire Hathaway.
"At first they had no interest in helping me out at all, but I called them every Wednesday for 18 months until they realized the only way to get rid of me was to drop the trademark. So they dropped the trademark and opened up the opportunity for me to launch the family brand," Lawless recalls laughing.
In the roughly 18 months since, Lawless and his fiancee, Alicia, who works alongside him at the company, have seen their lives changed by their return to the Western lifestyle.
"This community is so incredible, and I approached them just from this idea of wanting to learn and wanting to be a student of the Western way of life," Lawless says. "My great-great grandfather invented the best boot for the job in the 1800s just by learning and listening to the consumer, and that's exactly what I want to do."
He and Alicia dove into learning about bots and how they're made. In their quest to design the best pair of boots for the job, they traveled to Leon, Mexico, a cowboy boot manufacturing mecca, talked to rodeo athletes, and visited dozens of working cattle ranches to determine what it is that cowboys and cowgirls today like and dislike about their boots.
For Lawless, the secret to success lies in reprising what made HYER great all those generations ago: getting out and connecting with the people wearing boots. He has the added benefit of being able to innovate to meet their needs for style, performance, and comfort with the latest developments in fit and climate control.
Had C.H. Hyer invented any other type of shoe — a flip-flop, for instance — Lawless surmises that his name would have been lost to history. But since he is credited with inventing the cowboy boot, and the boot has become a symbol of the spirit of the West and synonymous with a special way of life, the Hyer name carries the cachet of both tradition and craftsmanship.
"In this post-COVID world I think that a lot of people are slowing down and trying to figure out what's important to them, and this community and the Western way of life are perfectly suited for where we are. It's been a blessing," Lawless says.
With the boot business back in action, it's once again become a point of pride for the family.
"Getting to work together is a dream come true," Alicia says. "It's exciting we've been given the opportunity to relaunch this company and tell this story to America."
Drawn to that story were the folks at Western powerhouse brand, Teton Ridge, which announced a partnership with HYER Boots at the 2022 National Finals Rodeo.
HYER Boots founder Zach Lawless with fiancee, Alicia, who works alongside him at the company.
"We're really excited about the future with Teton Ridge. They have incredible visions for the Western space," Lawless says. "A company like Teton has the means to purchase big companies and big established boot brands, and instead they decided to come help the small family-run business that was trying to restore a piece of American history. I think that speaks to what their vision is for their business, and we're really fortunate that they made that decision to work with us."
HYER's inaugural product launch will coincide with The American Rodeo in March, with more to come after that. And folks are already lining up.
Shortly after Lawless relaunched HYER Boots, he created the brand's social media handles online. Almost immediately he received a message from a man in Colorado. "He said, 'Are you relaunching HYER Boots?' I said yes and asked what he thought. And he said, 'Well, those in the know consider HYER the best pair of boots ever made,' and I was like, 'Okay, well, I'm going to make the best pair of boots ever made — again.'"
For more on HYER Boots, visit hyerboots.com
Header Image: Zach Lawless, great-great-grandson of C.H. Hyer and founder of today's HYER Boots, pictured with his fiancee (in vintage HYER boots). The new HYER revives the spirit of C.H. Hyer "not by bring back the old but by revolutionizing the boot world just as he did."
