A Boot Collector Feature
One of the West’s leading saddle makers, run from Denver for some seventy years, whose thick cow-country catalogs sold cowboy boots by mail.
Fred Mueller opened his first shop in Denver in 1891 and became one of the leading Western saddle makers of his day. In 1917 he sold the business to its employees, who kept it going well after his death in 1924 and into the early 1960s.
Its reach came from the mail. Fred Mueller catalogs were big, illustrated books aimed squarely at the cowboy, rodeo, and ranch trade: the 1926 Catalog 50 ran a hundred pages of rodeo, roper, and bronc saddles, harness, bridles, saddle trees, spurs, bits, holsters, lariats, quirts, hats, chaps, and boots. Later editions kept the formula, from the 1936 Catalog No. 75 to a 1955 “Cow Country Boots and Saddles” catalog offering cowboy boots, saddles for rodeo, work, and cowgirls, Navajo blankets, Western shirts, and buckles. These catalogs are collectible in their own right today.
Have a Fred Mueller catalog or a pair of Mueller-sold boots? We’d love to see them.
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