A Boot Collector Feature

Hamley & Co.

A saddlery founded by two brothers in 1883 that helped start the Pendleton Round-Up, and whose mail-order catalogs sold cowboy boots across the West.

The Story

Brothers J.J. and Henry Hamley founded Hamley & Co. as a leather and saddle shop in 1883, working first in the upper Midwest and the northern West, in places including South Dakota and Idaho. After Henry’s death, J.J. moved the business to Pendleton, Oregon, in 1905, and there it expanded into tack, boots, clothing, blankets, and other Western goods. In 1910 J.J. Hamley helped organize and found the Pendleton Round-Up, and the company has stayed close to the rodeo ever since, most famously by supplying its prize saddles. Hamley also played a part in the development of the Wade saddle tree.

Like other saddle houses of its era, Hamley reached far beyond its own town through mail order. When rural free delivery put a post office at nearly every crossroads, cowboys and ranchers could order from a catalog without ever visiting a shop, and Hamley’s catalogs, such as the 1935 edition, offered cowboy boots along with saddles and gear. The company survived a devastating fire and several changes of ownership; two veterinarians, Parley Pearce and Blair Woodfield, revived it in 2005, and in 2019 the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation bought the Hamley brand and properties.