The history of cowboy hats starts with the name, John Batterson Stetson. In the later years of 1860?s the hats were associated with heroism. It was then adapted to the uniform of the cavalry force. The media popularized these hats to costume great warriors in the screen. It then, served as the universal image for the sporty native hero of America. Now they are fashion symbols, which reflect the traditional style of sturdiness.
History states that Stetson had made a wide-brimmed, high-crowned hat from common fur of the horse hides, during his wild hunting tours to fulfill a bet. Its multipurpose functions such as large brim to protect the sun, the crown to fetch water or fan the fire, whip the horse etc gained public acceptance. The term cowboy hat was coined from its popularity among the cowboys. Stetson sold the first hat of its type in Central City, Colorado in the name ?Boss of the Plains,? for , which was more commonly known as the "ten-gallon cowboy hat". Some contradict the credit of invention to Stetson with the argument that the ranchers of Mexico and Texas had the practice of using wide trimmed fur-felt hat in the mid 1800 called "Sombreros". It was also popular in Spain. They consider that Stetson did not invent the hat, only popularized it.
The Pork Pie was the dominant style of cowboy hats in the 1860's. The hat was soft inexpensive with the features of telescope crown and brim of 3". It was common till the late 1870's. The 4x4 was the dominant hat style of rural America from about 1790 until about 1880. It is now popular in names such as "Boss of the plains," "Trapper," "planter?. These early cowboy hats have a distinctive feature of three- piece lining. Hamburg was another popular style of cowboy hat with the letter M style crown.
The 20th century revolutionized the making of cow boy hats with the transition from hand woven hats to machine made hats.
