A Boot Collector Feature

L. White Boot and Saddle Shop

A Polish immigrant's boot and saddle shop on Fort Worth's North Main Street, where a father and son built boots for cattlemen, a Texas governor, and the mayor of New York.

The Story

Leon White came to the United States from Poland in 1886, arriving at Ellis Island with a satchel of leatherworking tools. He made his way to Bryan, Texas, where he started building custom boots, and later opened a shop at 2461 North Main Street in Fort Worth, on the road to the Stockyards. He added saddles to the business, and the L. White Boot and Saddle Shop worked from that North Main address for about fifty years.

It was a family shop. A 1941 Fort Worth Star-Telegram photo shows Leon White with his son, L. L. White, admiring a pair of custom boots the shop had made for New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to wear in the opening parade of the rodeo at Madison Square Garden. In 1946 the paper photographed Governor Coke Stevenson being measured for new boots at the same address before he opened the Southwestern Exposition and Fat Stock Show. That caption names the bootmaker as Louis White of the “Louis White Boot and Saddle Shop”; the records don’t say outright whether that’s the son, L. L. White, though the shared address suggests so.

What They're Known For

Custom-fitted boots and saddles for working Texans through the first half of the twentieth century, along with a handful of famous customers. The Texas Trail of Fame, which inducted Leon White in 2004, describes him as a product of the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century West whose boots and saddles were worn by many Texans as the region modernized. Look for “L. White” and a Fort Worth address on labels and saddle stamps.

Labels & Markings

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