A Boot Collector Feature

Teitzel-Jones Boot Company

From a cavalry bootmaker’s shop outside the gate of Fort Riley to the largest boot plant in the Southwest, and some of the most spectacular cowboy boots of the 1920s.

The Story

J.C. Teitzel, a master cordwainer who ran a small German shoe shop, set up in 1875 just outside the main gate of Fort Riley, Kansas, in Junction City. Fort Riley was the home of the U.S. Army’s cavalry, and Teitzel became the premier bootmaker for its officers. One collector has wondered whether Custer himself died with Teitzel boots on. Early on he was joined by a business partner, Carlton C. Dehner, who saw the boots in Teitzel’s back room and suggested they build a factory to make them more widely available; Dehner ran the business while Teitzel made the boots.

In the mid-1910s (sources give both 1914 and 1916) the business moved to Wichita, where Schuyler Jones, Sr., joined it. As Teitzel, Jones & Dehner, and better known as Teitzel-Jones, it had the largest boot-making plant in the Southwest. Teitzel brought a long list of Fort Riley customers with him, which proved a boon during World War I, when the plant ran around the clock supplying boots to the government and Jones traveled to military posts to measure officers for custom boots. The company supplied West Point, the National Park Service, and others, and became famous for officers’ boots, cowboy boots, and custom shoes. Teitzel also designed a line of tooled leather fashions for women, sold as “Made by Teitzel.”

Teitzel died in 1929. Jones and Dehner disagreed on many things, and Dehner sold his share to Jones and moved to Omaha, where he founded The Dehner Company, still making boots today. (One collector’s account has Dehner staying behind at Fort Riley when Teitzel moved to Wichita; we follow Dehner’s own company history here.)

Schuyler Jones took full ownership in 1930, and Teitzel-Jones kept making boots for the U.S. military until the horse cavalry was phased out during World War II, while also turning out some of the finest cowboy boots around. Like Hyer, it sent fitters from post to post to measure cavalry officers and take orders, and the two companies became the military’s major boot suppliers. Collectors of the era put it simply: Hyer was the leading cowboy boot company, Blucher did the best custom work, and Teitzel-Jones made the best military boots. Teitzel-Jones closed in 1950, after 75 years.

Its bootmakers carried the trade on. Carl McDowell started at Teitzel-Jones as a handyman in 1933 and was foreman of the bottoming room when he left to open his own Wichita shop in 1946.

What They're Known For

Precise, bespoke riding boots for cavalry officers, and, in the 1920s, some of the most extravagant cowboy boots of their day. One longtime collector calls his 1920s Teitzel-Jones pair, made to order in Wichita, the boots he would grab if his house were burning down. Markings from the partnership years read “Teitzel Jones Dehner Boots, Wichita,” and surviving riding boots from about 1914 to 1929 still turn up for sale.