Ten Gallons of Myths for One Iconic Cowboy Hat

By Heather Blanton

No one wore a ten-gallon hat like the Duke.

Let’s talk hats. Not just any hat. The fabled ten-gallon cowboy hat. Where did the name come from? What is it exactly? Is it just a big Stetson?

Here’s what we know. Generally speaking, any cowboy hat that has a tall, rounded crown and broad brim fits the description. The phrase was brought into popular culture by Hollywood and famous cowboy actors like Tom Mix and William S. Hart. Probably around 1925. The name, however, existed before then.

So where did it come from? Interestingly, there are two Spanish terms that could be the culprit. First, galón—the word for galloon, or the narrow, braided trim that ran around the crown of a type of vaquero’s hat. Sounds awfully close to gallon, right? And these Spanish hats were tall enough to accommodate ten regular hat bands, like those worn on an American cowboy’s hat.

Early example of a vaquero and his hat.

The crown on an average Stetson was only 4”. Hmmm. Sounds to me like a cowpoke was having a little fun at a vaquero’s expense: “Looky there at that tall hat, Slim.” Texas Pete tags his companion in the shoulder and points at a vaquero moseying through the smoky saloon. “I reckon he’s got room up there for ten galóns.”

Another possibility—and the one I find more likely—is the simple Americanization of the phrase tan galán. Loosely translated, it means gallant, handsome, fine-looking, even expensive. If the Spanish cowboys were going around referring to their hats as tan galán compared to the American cowboys’ simple, flat-brimmed Stetsons—well, with men, everything is a competition. It’s not much of a stretch to see where the nickname could have easily gotten its start. Especially once the U.S. hat manufacturers started turning out fancier styles. Stetson and some others designed some pretty, uh, understated hats. Not.

Tom Mix -- arguably the first to sport the white hat of the good guy.

I can just hear the argument:

“Mine is a tan galán hat, señor.”

“No way, Juan. Mine is a ten-gallon hat.”

Juan blinks. “Uh, si, señor, if you say so.”

Reminds me of Hoss Cartwright's hat.

Now those hats have some tall crowns!

Pretty much no one thinks the term started with a hat that could hold ten gallons of water. True, the early cowboy hats were made from beaver, tightly woven—especially the Stetsons—which made them ideal for wet conditions. It is a fact a man could give his horse some water from his hat without ruining it (long as it was beaver). But even Stetson acknowledged in the early twenties that their largest hat held only a few quarts of water.  

This myth may have come from the fact that during the civil war, a soldier’s hat was often used as a quick feedsack to hold grain for a horse.  

Maybe we'll never know, but it is fun to speculate. What do you think about the theories for the ten-gallon name?

Would You Have Done It?

www.laurirobinson.blogspot.com

 

 

Nowhere else in the world can lay claim to the old west. Other countries had their wild, rowdy, or scandalous times, but only America had the land west of the Mississippi—that vast, unclaimed land that held promises of change, beauty, wonder, and riches—and gave birth to mail order brides.

Men set west in droves and succeeded in mining, ranching, farming, and building communities, but also discovered something was missing. Women. With nine men to every one woman in most western territories, men started writing ‘back east’. Some would ask family members to find a suitable partner and send them west. Others wrote to churches and/or put ads in newspapers and magazines.

Women were excited about the opportunity. Between the civil war and the westward movement, the ratio between men and women in the east was extremely disproportional with women outnumbering the men. There were very few career options for women, and poverty was on the rise. Even to those with financial support, becoming a mail order bride carried less social stigma than becoming a spinster.

There were newspapers and magazines dedicated to connecting men and women, and marriage brokers opened Mail Order Bride Agencies on both sides of the Mississippi, proclaiming what many already knew, that without women towns wouldn’t become ‘civilized’ or flourish.

The couples would usually share a few letters, possibly a photo if either had the means to provide one, and eventually would come to the ultimate decision to marry or not. Some ‘brokers’ actually performed proxy marriages between the couple to assure neither party changed their minds upon meeting. The divorce rates of mail ordered brides were very low, and many marriages proved loving and long lasting.

I’ve always loved mail order bride’s tales, and was excited when given the opportunity to create a series for Harlequin with another author. Kathryn Albright and I teamed up to write about a small (fictional) town in Kansas that created a ‘Betterment Committee’ to bring suitable women to town in order to marry some of the many bachelors. We had a wonderful time creating Oak Grove and writing about twin sisters Mary and Maggie McCary for Mail Order Brides of Oak Grove.

Twin sisters say "I do" in the Wild West! 

SURPRISE BRIDE FOR THE COWBOY by Lauri Robinson

Mary McCary never wanted to be a mail-order bride, but falling off the Oak Grove train into Steve Putnam's lap changes everything… Could he be the cowboy to tempt her down the aisle?

TAMING THE RUNAWAY BRIDE by Kathryn Albright

Running from trouble, Maggie McCary signs up to be a mail-order bride. She doesn't intend to actually marry…until she shares one sensational kiss with Jackson Miller!

The series will continue with Winning the Mail Order Bride coming out in August, A Bride and A Baby in September, and more stories in 2018.

So….What about you? If you’d lived back then, would you have left all you’d ever known and headed west on little more than a promise of marriage to a stranger?

Deadwood

I just returned from a reader/author event in Deadwood, SD. If you’re an author, this is the event for you. If you’re a reader, this is definitely the event for you. If you want to visit the Black Hills and wonder what else there is to do, check out Wild Deadwood Reads. I’m really hoping that this event will be scheduled for next year.

https://wilddeadwoodreads.wordpress.com/

As a history buff, Deadwood is a dream. History oozes from the bricks, whispers through the pines, and stares you in the face. Other than Bill Hickok meeting his untimely end in Deadwood and a few tidbits about Calamity Jane, I really didn’t know a lot about Deadwood’s history before I left for this event. So, being the curious type, I started searching on the Internet. (All the subsequent information is gleaned from the official site of the town of Deadwood.)

In 1875, a miner named John B. Pearson found gold in a narrow canyon in the Northern Black Hills. This canyon became known as "Deadwood Gulch," because of the many dead trees that lined the canyon walls at the time. The name stuck and Deadwood was born…kinda. It wasn’t until the gold rush into the Black Hills in 1876 that the town was established.

Deadwood circa 1876

Deadwood’s early history matches that of most frontier gold towns—wild, fairly lawless, and with a male population that vastly outnumbered that of the “fairer sex.” Saloons, gambling establishments, dance halls, and brothels were all considered legitimate businesses and were well known throughout the area. However, by 1877, Deadwood was evolving from a primitive mining camp to a community with a sense of order. The community organized a government, hired a sheriff to keep law and order, and began the transition from frontier to civilization. That transition almost came to an abrupt end when a fire on September 26, 1879 burned most of the business district. Rather than quit, the community set about to rebuild and passed laws requiring only certain building materials to be used for all construction. (Most of Deadwood’s historical district is constructed of brick and mortar for this reason.)

In 1890, the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad connected Deadwood to the outside world. Prior to that, in March 1878, Paul Rewman established Western South Dakota's first telephone exchange in Deadwood. Yes, you read that right—the telephone was in Deadwood. A flood in 1883 almost destroyed the town and another fire in 1894 took out a lot of the older timber constructed buildings, yet Deadwood continued on. Today, it is a tourist destination, a gambler’s paradise (perhaps harkening back to its much earlier days), and a gem of a city set in the stunning beauty of the Black Hills.

Wild Horses

Last spring, my contemporary western romance, Wild Horses, was released.  It was the start of my four-book, Sierra Legacy series, published by Harlequin, that I just wrapped up with my May book,
His Last Rodeo.

The title of Wild Horses is pretty self-explanatory.  There are a lot of wild horses in the story!  The heroine is a plant biologist, hired by the Bureau of Land Management to study the impact of wild horses on the native plants east of the Sierra Nevada.  The hero is an activist, who gentles and re-homes captured mustangs, and would prefer that the wild horses stay wild.  Needless to say, there was a whole lot of conflict between these two, and the fact that they used to be in love made the story even more complex!

I learned a lot about wild horses, researching this book. I studied where they'd come from, the controversies surrounding them and the creation of the Wild Free-roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971, which currently governs their care.  I read a great book, called Wild Horses of the West by J. Edward De Steiguer, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to understand the history of wild horses in America.

I've been thinking about wild horses a lot lately, because I'm writing a novella, also set east of the Sierras, and a couple characters from Wild Horses show up in the story.  The hero of this as-yet-untitled novella gentles wild horses with the help of veterans who are struggling with PTSD, as part of the therapeutic program he's created.  Which led me to wonder, what's going on with wild horses right now?  And what will their fate be under our current administration?

For anyone who is unaware of the plight of our nation's wild horses, I will try to sum it up quickly here.  Wild horses are managed by the Bureau of Land Management.  The BLM also manages other uses for public lands, including leasing land for ranching, for oil, gas and mineral extraction, and for many other uses which are often in conflict with the needs of wild horses.  Because of the many interests wanting to make use of BLM land, the horses' range has been shrinking, and they are often pushed onto less habitable land because good rangeland is leased to ranchers.

When herds show signs of stress, or are considered to be overpopulated, the wild horses are rounded up, often by helicopter, creating extremely stressful and dangerous conditions where horses are often injured.  Once rounded up, the horses live in corrals managed by the BLM.  Many animal protection groups have expressed concern about the round-ups and the living conditions provided for these rounded-up horses, who often are held in crowded conditions in hot climates without shade.

Many people consider wild horses to be pests— domesticated horses who have gone feral and who eat grass better used for cattle and sheep.  Other people consider wild horses to be beautiful symbols of American history and the old west, who should be protected and allowed to run free.  And many wild horses really are part of history, descended from the mustangs first brought to America by the Spanish in the 16th century.

A quick Google search revealed a lot of recent news about wild horses. Wyoming has rounded up 42 wild horses and is offering them for adoption.  And this article, about the history of wild horses in the Great Basin area, showed up from Elko Nevada.  It's informative, and also a little hard to read about horses rounded up for consumption in the twenties and thirties, and not even offered food or water.  On a happier note, some formerly-wild horses in Colorado have been trained to become sheriff's patrol horses.  And in eastern Idaho, the BLM is working with 4-H groups to gentle and re-home wild horses. I know that many people would prefer that wild horses remain wild, but at least these horses will be well-loved and cared for in their new situations.

But then there is the not-so-good-news for wild horses.  As part of the proposed budget of the current political administration, the BLM would be able to round up wild horses, euthanize them or sell them for slaughter.

National Geographic wrote a couple articles about wild horses in February this year, and in one they give an overview of the various options for managing the herds that is pretty informative.

If you love horses, I hope you will keep an eye on the news and the actions of our government, and write to your representatives with your opinions and ideas. Because whether you're a rancher who considers wild horses as pests competing for good grass, or someone who believes that wild horses should remain wild, I think we can all agree on one thing. These animals are our responsibility, and it is up to us to make sure they are treated well, do not suffer, and are managed in the most humane way possible.

And as for my story, about veterans and wild horses?  It's coming out in October as part of an anthology called Falling for You, along with nine other novellas written by Harlequin authors. It should be available for pre-order by the end of July.

And on a quick personal note, this is my first blog post for Cowboy Kisses and I'm thrilled to be a part of this great community!  I'll be posting here on the second Monday of each month. And in the meantime, I'll be stopping by the Cowboy Kisses Facebook group, and hanging out on my own blog and social media pages.  I hope to see you there!

Cowboy Six Pack

Got your attention didn't I? ;)

I don't have any cowboy six pack photos you can drool over, but I have a deal for you on a six pack of contemporary western romance novellas.

My story, Catch the Rain, is part of this box set. I had the title for this story and the premise written in a file of story ideas. When I was asked if I would like to join this great line-up of authors, I jumped at the chance and pulled out the information on my story. The fact the heroine in this story has the same disability as one of my granddaughters didn't hit me until I was writing the story. I used her frustration, and my daughter's learning all she could about the problem, to help me flesh out the story and make Kitty, the heroine, even more believable.

Catch the Rain

Running from her past, Kitty Baxter catches a glimpse of her future—if she’s brave enough to believe in herself and the kind-hearted stranger who claims she deserves love. 

Focused on setting up his new veterinarian practice, Zach MacDonald becomes sidetracked by a karaoke singing beauty with a secret. He sees what others don’t, and becomes determined to make Kitty see that anyone can learn to catch the rain.

Every woman loves a six-pack! Six sexy cowboy stories sure to make you swoon as they ride, rope and two-step into your heart!

This box set is $0.99 or free if you have KU.

 

Buy Link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B072LR2WFL

To Steal a Cowboy’s Heart by Kari Lynn Dell: Rule #1: when undercover, never get personal. He’s the exception she can’t afford…or resist. If lying is your job, is true love possible?

Cowboy Courtship by Allison Merritt: Despite work-place trauma and domestic drama, Dean and London might be able to overcome any relationship trouble with a little patience and a sweet cowboy courtship.

Changing a Cowboy's Tune by Stephanie Berget: After years apart, can the barrel racer and her cowboy see past their own dreams and cultivate a life they both love?

Catch the Rain by Paty Jager: Zach MacDonald, the new veterinarian in town, sees in stable hand, Kitty Baxter, more than she sees in herself.

Broken Vows by Melissa Keir: Distance causes problems for Rick and Julie. It turns their world upside down. When Julie puts her foot down, will Rick make the right choice or will their vows break?

Cowboy Wrecked by D’Ann Lindun: Can a schoolteacher who wants nothing more than a family of her own and a bull rider unable to father children find a way to build a life together.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 30+ novels, a dozen novellas, and a passel of short stories of murder mystery, western romance, and action adventure. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. This is what readers have to say about the Letters of Fate series- “...filled with romance, adventure and twists and turns.” “What a refreshing and well written love story of fate and hope!”

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