Cowboy Boots for Real Tenderfoots : Custom boot-makers in Oklahoma make footwear that lasts a lifetime.
“Pepe” Vega was cutting leather roses, part of a design copied from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. His intricate adaptation of Michelangelo’s masterpiece would be incorporated into a pair of cowboy boots, a usage the Renaissance artist could never have anticipated when he took brush to plaster to please a Pope. It’s also a development no six-gun cowpoke could have imagined when begging to die with his boots on.
Master boot-maker Remigio Vega, known to everyone as Pepe, sees nothing extraordinary about this particular custom order. He’s been making boots since he was a 10-year-old in San Antonio, Tex., and, frankly, he’s seen flashier.
He put down his tools and strolled over to a pair of 24-inch-tall, turquoise-and-cream boots being made for a Beverly Hills real estate agent. The price tag: $7,000.
These were just a couple of the headliners in progress at the Blucher Boot Co. in Fairfax, Okla., Pop. 1,700, when I visited in June. Located in north-central Oklahoma, Blucher is one of many small companies around the West that still pursue the fine art of the custom cowboy boot. And it, along with two others in the area, offer a slice of Old West life, as well as a slice of fashion.
Blucher’s company was founded in Wyoming in 1915 by Gus Blucher, and has counted among its customers John Wayne, Tom Mix and even Buffalo Bill Cody. But the customer they’re most proud of, said shop manager Paul Mays III, son of current owners Marcella and Paul Mays, Jr., is “the working cowboy. He’s our mainstay. The cowboy wakes up before dawn. He’s working cattle by 4:30, while the sun’s just coming up. His boots better be comfortable.”
Blucher boots are all handmade of top-grade leathers, some of them as exotic as kangaroo and rhinoceros. They are fitted from wooden lasts made to the measurements of their customers’ feet and sewn on sturdy old Singer sewing machines. Exteriors, interior linings and soles are made of leather, and all heels are of stacked leather.
Gus Blucher was the first to make the inlaid leather boots that have become not only the cowboy’s pride, but a major fashion accessory for dudes. Many of Blucher’s original designs, especially a popular butterfly motif, are still in use at the company he founded.
Page 44 of Blucher’s mail-order catalogue shows a pair of purple calfskin boots with inlaid leaves and flowers in pink, green, red and gold for $675. For $750, a cowboy (or any dude) can step into a pair of dark blue calfskin boots with red wingtips and the famous Blucher butterfly inlay design. In all, the catalogue shows 44 boot styles, ranging in price from $375 to $800.
Just north of Oklahoma City in Guthrie, Okla., Ray Dorwart hung up his spurs and became a boot-maker a decade ago. “I figured I knew what a working cowboy needs, since that’s what I was.” Dorwart works with his brother, Bart. They share their shop with saddle-maker John Willemsma.
While the Dorwart brothers can do complicated stitchery and inlay work, “The fancy boots are for fancy people who have the money,” Ray Dorwart said. Adversity was the kick in the pants needed to get neighboring guthrie boot-maker Jay Griffith into the business. “It was during the Great Depression. I had no money, needed boots and decided I could make ‘em--and I did.” He made that first pair 60 years ago by kerosene light in the kitchen of his grandmother’s ranch house.
Today, his modest three-person boot operation, The Griffith Boot Co., turns out eight to 10 pair of custom cowboy boots a week. Prices start at $375.
Griffith’s bootery is housed in a historic building right next door to the Blue Belle Saloon where Tom Mix once tended bar. Immaculately groomed in jeans, white shirt, Western jacket and white hat, Griffith also prides himself on being a historian. He claims that some of the first cowboy boots were made in 1875 in Olathe, Kan.
Prior to that, cowboys wore surplus army boots from the Civil War, farmers’ boots, planters’ boots and even brogans, the cheap foot gear made to fit either foot.
GUIDEBOOK
Where to Buy Boots
G.C. Blucher Boot Company, 350 North Main St., Fairfax, Okla. 74637, (918) 642-3205. For $2, they mail a color catalogue and complete measuring kit including instructions and tape measure.
Jay Griffith Boot Makers, 120 S. Second St., Box 726, Guthrie, Okla. 73044, (405) 282-3824.
Dorwart Brothers (Ray and Bart), 215 S. Second St., Guthrie, Okla. 73044, (405) 282-5336.
Both Fairfax (about 2 hours away) and Guthrie (about 45 minutes) are within easy driving distance of Oklahoma City.
