A Boot Collector Feature

Hyer Boots

A Kansas shoemaker asked to build something a cowboy could actually ride in, in 1876 — and the design he came up with is the reason the cowboy boot looks the way it does.

Founded1875–1880 · Olathe, KS

ByCharles H. Hyer

Claim to fameDesigned the original cowboy boot, 1876

StatusRevived 2023 by Hyer's descendant

The Story

Charles H. Hyer started making boots from his home in Olathe, Kansas, in 1875, formally founding the Hyer Boot Company in 1880. The pivotal moment came in 1876, when a cowboy came to Hyer asking for a boot built specifically for horseback riding. Hyer's answer — a pointed toe, a higher heel, and a scalloped top — became, in effect, the template for the cowboy boot as it's still built today.

Hyer’s roots were in old-world shoemaking. Charles and his brother Edward were first-generation Americans, the sons of German immigrants, and they learned the trade from their father, William, a shoemaker. The cowboy boot they helped create descended from European military boots, the Wellington and the Hessian, and the Hyer factory’s skilled workers came largely from Austria, Germany, Poland, and Hungary.

Hyer was also one of the first bootmakers to sell by mail, sending customers a self-measuring kit; by the early 1900s Hyer and Justin were the two giants of mail-order cowboy boots and each other’s main competition, and like Teitzel-Jones it sent fitters from post to post to measure cavalry officers for boots, making the two companies the military’s major boot suppliers.

The design caught on, and the company grew into C.H. Hyer and Sons, manufacturing 15,000 pairs a year by 1919 and ranking among the largest handmade boot operations in the country. Famous wearers included Buffalo Bill Cody, Will Rogers, and Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt. After Charles Hyer's death in 1921, his sons kept the business running, but labor shortages and manufacturing shifts through the 1960s and '70s took their toll, and in 1977 the family sold the company to the Ben Miller Boot Company of El Paso, which eventually discontinued the Hyer name.

A note on the revivalThe brand went dormant after the 1977 sale. In 2023, Zach Lawless — a fifth-generation descendant of Charles Hyer — acquired the trademark and relaunched HYER Boots, using the original designs updated with contemporary materials. Separately, a different modern brand, Olathe Boot Company, also markets itself around Hyer's original 1875 shop and town — the two are not the same company today, even though both point back to the same origin story.

What They're Known For

Being, by the company's own account and a fair bit of historical documentation, the shop that actually invented the cowboy boot's defining features. That's a bigger claim than most brands in this series can make, and it's the main reason Hyer is worth knowing even during the decades the name wasn't on any new boots at all.

Labels & Markings

A marking from a pair in the TW Collection. Select a photo to see it full size.

Hyer Olathe Kansas woven label — Woven label: “Bootmakers Since 1875, Hyer, Olathe Kan., Quality Boots, Made in U.S.A.” A label like this comes from the original company, before the 1977 sale.

The design that started it all, out of production for decades, now back under a descendant of the man who invented it.

See more at hyerboots.com