Stetson Hat History & Heritage

John Batterson Stetson was born in East Orange, New Jersey in 1830 — the seventh of twelve children — and learned the trade at his father's bench. Tuberculosis sent him west. He rose in a St. Joseph, Missouri brickyard until a river flood wiped the factory out, then joined a Pike's Peak gold party in 1862. In a Colorado rainstorm he felted beaver fur the way his father taught him and made a tall, wide-brimmed hat. A passing bullwhacker bought it for a five-dollar gold piece. First Stetson ever sold.

Healthy again, Stetson went back to Philadelphia with sixty dollars borrowed from his sister. On January 17, 1865 — Benjamin Franklin's birthday — he opened a one-room shop at 7th and Callowhill and cut the Boss of the Plains: smooth dome crown, flat brim, no dents, no decoration. It shipped blank on purpose. The man who bought it put in his own crease, and no two ended up alike.

The Boss sold faster than one room could make it. By 1870 Stetson had moved into a three-story building a block from Independence Hall. He sent a Boss to every Western dealer with a letter asking for a dozen more. By the turn of the century he ran the biggest hat works in the world — thousands of hands, a hospital and lending library on the Philadelphia campus, and a grand prize at the 1900 Paris Exposition. The name had stopped meaning a company and started meaning the hat itself.

Arizona cowboy turned painter Lon Megargee painted a rider tipping his hat brim full of water to his horse. Stetson bought the painting and the rights in 1923 and ran it in their advertising the year after. Look inside a Stetson today and it is still printed there.

Tom Mix made nearly 300 films and wore a Stetson through most of them. The company built his hats to order and named a crown after him — Gus and Tom Mix are still on our shape list. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and John Wayne followed, and the western hat became something you recognized before the actor.

Stetsons are made in Garland, Texas now, at the only vertically integrated fur felt mill in North America — same roof that turns out Resistol and Charlie 1 Horse. Most arrive already creased: cattleman, pinch front, whatever the line was built for. Good felt doesn't mind. It takes steam and it takes a new shape, so the crease a hat left the factory with isn't the one you're stuck with. We set it to your head at the bench, two doors south of the bowling alley.