$385.00 – $820.00
1898 Campaign Hat – The Spanish–American War was a conflict between Spain and the United States of America from April to August 1898. It heralded the emergence of America as a world power and climaxed with Teddy Roosevelt’s’ charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. This is the enlisted man’s hat style.
Enlisted Man’s Issue – the 1898 Campaign Hat.
The Spanish–American War was a conflict between Spain and the United States of America from April to August 1898. It heralded the emergence of America as a world power and climaxed with Teddy Roosevelt’s’ charge up San Juan Hill in Cuba. This is our version of the enlisted man’s hat.
Our hats off to world renowned cartoonist Everett Peck for ordering the first one,“Longfellow, Just got the hat and it’s perfect! Really great job, like the hat-band too. It’s so beautiful I kinda hate to give it the worn out sidekick treatment but I got a feeling I will. Do you suggest the same method you ( taking a shower with it )?” Thanks! Everett.
Lee Marvin as the evil gunman and Tim Strawn, wearing a black campaign hat in the highly entertaining 1965 western comedy, Cat Ballou. Marvin also played the down-on-his-luck drunk old west hero; Kid Shelleen. Jane Fonda was young and beautiful and great as Cat, and Marvin’s acting was so good he bagged the best actor Oscar that year.
See all of our Military Hats here.
Louis Kossuth was an immigrant from Hungary and in 1852 he introduced the “Slouch Hat” style to America. Over the next decade the term came to signify almost all soft creased hats with medium or wider brims. These wider brimmed hats came into their own during the Civil War. They were worn by many soldiers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.
The Slouch hat started the military style of cowboy hats. It would come to include Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughrider hat from 1898 and The Kilgore style from Apocalypse Now.
“Slouch Hats” worn by many Cavalry soldiers since the days of the American Civil War often include a colored cord that slides over the standard satin ribbon and bow hatband, which is referred to as a cord, braid, hobble, wrap, or acorn.
Guidelines for the use of the Cavalry Cord and colors were first outlined in 1890 in Circular 10, from the U.S. Army Adjutant General’s Office. Different colors are used to identify different branches of the service. The most common color, yellow, is worn by all enlisted Cavalry soldiers. Infantry wear white, Scarlet is for Artillery; Black; Chaplains/Staff, Black/Gold; Field Officer, Black/Silver; Warrant Officer.
The original reason for the acorns at the end of the cavalry cords is believed to have been to keep the cavalry man awake in the saddle, from the gentle drumming as the acorns bounced off the brim.
There is a Cavalry legend that credits a non-com during the Civil War with tying knots in his cord to signify he’d been battle tested. The idea caught on and many units took to the practice on both sides. You can see an example on our Josey Wales Hat. Today cav cords can be knotted but it does not signify battle tested. Shoulder patches originated in the First World War to identify units, battalions or regiments. Combat patches (to signify a period of service in a war zone) started during the Second World War and continues to this day.
Many customers have been requesting that we dirty up their new hats to make them look trail worn. Pictured is a dusty Josey Wales – our Josey Wales hat with several years’ worth of trail dust – as if a hard living horse soldier had been wearing it.
We’ve got three different degrees of trail dust. Light (add $55.00) – medium (add $75.00), and heavy (add $95.00). Light would be what you see on our Lt. Col. Kilgore, Our Sabre River hat has a medium dusting and heavy trail dust looks like our Josey Wales.
This is a similar process that costume designers apply to hats in the movies and t. v. Looks authentic and yore friends will swear yer just got off a trail drive, or a hitch in the Horse Cavalry! You can add trail dust during the check out process – or request it when you call your order in.
Our Windstring/Stampede String is made of heavy gauge Latigo lace {brown or black} and includes this complimenting leather slider. click image for a larger version
You can let us choose the right match for your hat or request brown or black latigo lace to go with your hand made cowboy hat.
Just add your request to the PRODUCTION NOTES as you build your hat.
Add a quality horse hair hat band to any hat (ADD during checkout with the purchase of a hat – not sold separately). Can be worn on ANY hat just by sliding it over the satin ribbon and bow {as seen on the Wasey} or wear it alone.
Captain Call a custom cowboy movie hat from Lonesome Dove (1989)
Binding the brim edge with the same Grosgrain ribbon as the hat band, strengthens the edge, making it stiffer and allowing the brim shape to hold better.
A bound edge finishes the brim off nicely with rich looking detail. Most small brimed, or Town hats, have a bound edge.
The open crowned hat style was perhaps the most common crown style of the late 19th century and sold in the mail order catalogues of the day like, Sears-Roebuck, and the Hudson Bay Company.
Cowboys would crease and mold the crown, to add character to their hat, and make it easier to pick up. Decades later the hat companies started pre-creasing the cowboy hats in the most popular styles.
A bound Brim is more difficult to re-work or re-shape – but can be removed fairly easily.
Not as dressy or showy as a bound edge, this unfinished brim edge was much more common on working hats, cavalry and military hats.
An unfinished brim allows you to shape and mold it to your taste – or easily change the look in the future.
An Unfinished Brim is more for an everyday-do-yer-work type Cowboy Hat and likely the more common of the two finishes for a wide brimmed cowboy hat. It is also fairly easy to reshape the brim of a beaver/beaver blend cowboy hat with just a steam iron and a bit of patience.
Our Sundance Kid Custom Handmade Hat is a good illustration of the typical 19th century nondescript everday cowboy hat
| Beaver Fur-Felt | |
|---|---|
| Size | 6 1/8, 6 1/4, 6 3/8, 6 1/2, 6 5/8, 6 3/4, 6 7/8, 7, 7 1/8, 7 1/4, 7 3/8, 7 1/2, 7 5/8, 7 3/4, 7 7/8, 8 |
Our hats are made with beaver fur felt which is dense and virtually waterproof. It consists of beaver and/or rabbit/hare fur blended with felt to produce a material that lasts 5-10 times longer than wool-felt. A fine Beaver and Beaver blend fur-felt hat body holds its shape wonderfully and is the gold standard from which to manufacture fine working hats.
As a general rule of thumb if a hat maker just describes their hat bodies as fur-felt, chances are it’s rabbit or Hare. Hat makers who use beaver fur-felt are proud of it and will state so.
In theory the higher the beaver content the higher the X factor – but unfortunately there is no standard within the hat making fraternity – and a lot of confusion. On the Internet few hat sellers tell you what their fur-felt is comprised of – and even seen straw hats promoted as 100X. The rough beaver hat bodies we use to make our cowboy hats are the best available and made in America.
We sell 3 quality beaver blends of fine western hats – 5X, 20X and 100X.
For an all weather hat it is hard to beat a pure beaver cowboy hat. Light, stiff and fabulous looking its the gold standard for an all weather hat, and will shed what ever comes its way. And consider this: Beavers and minks live in the water, rabbits in the dirt.
A young buffalo bill cody
The Dodge City is shown in long hair Beaver fur-felt. Some call it SHAGGY some call it GRIZZLY, we prefer the name FRONTIER fur-felt to describe it, as this is what the very first beaver fur-felt would have been like.
Not as long as Buffalo Bill Cody’s hat seen here, but longer than today’s standard hat bodies. You’ve likely seen this look before in a western movie. You can generally spot a long haired fur-felt in most of the westerns filmed in the 1930s and 40s. Errol Flynn wore it in several of his western movie’s like Dodge City.
We often get asked if we can make an EXACT replica of a particular hat. The answer is no. Realistically no one can. Our quality hats are made, formed, shaped by hand, not a machine. When anything is made by hand there are bound to be slight variations. Not even the original master hatter could make one EXACTLY the same. We make our version of that hat.
One of the first steps in the crafting of a custom cowboy hat.
We make hand-made custom cowboy hats so the crown and brim measurements are pretty much redundant. The hats you see online are our standard hats, which have specific crown heights and brim widths to maximize the look of that particular style or hat design.
If you wish a different crown height or brim width, or if you want to tell us anything else about the making of your hat, just enter it into the PRODUCTION NOTES as you put together your hat order.
We can make up to a six (6″) inch crown and a five (5″) brim.
Any hat with a brim width of more than 4 inches we must start with an oversized hat body, which adds a little to the cost. However the oversized brim can give you up to 50% more sun/bad weather protection, than a regular hat body.
Some hat styles with a wider brim include The Wasey, Quigley, Everett Hitch, Blondie, Little J, The Dunson, Last of the Dogmen, Wild Bill, all our B-Movie hats, and many of our Custom Rodeo Hats.
Color variances caused by individual computer monitors is beyond our control.
Light colors will reflect heat the best – while dark colors will retain the heat the most – with black being the worst for staying hot (black absorbs sunlight). However black is the most formal color so bowlers and top hats were generally black or dark gray.
Please keep in mind we try to take our pictures with natural light – so differences between the same color reflects the difference in light when the picture was taken: Indoors, Outdoors, Sunny Day or Cloudy.
For the first 15-20 years cowboy hats were marketed – your choice of color was black and about 3 shades of brown.
Order your hat in 100X undyed, pure beaver fur-felt, and be one of the first to hearken back to an era in hat making a hundred and forty years ago. The first cowboy hats were made from 100% beaver fur-felt, natural and undyed, and unless the cowboy lost it or had it stolen – the hat lasted a lifetime. For an all weather hat – nothing beats a traditional western hat made from pure beaver fur – it’s what old west cowboys wore.
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BEST PRACTICES!You should know your hat size – just like you know your shoe size, pant, shirt or ring size.
If you are new to wearing sized hats it is always a good idea to visit your nearest mall and try on a few. That way you know fit and what your size is.
We are making a hand made Custom Old West, or Western Movie Hat for you. You will keep it. 99% of orders everything will go smooth. In the odd situation where it doesn’t – we will make you happy, and get it right 100% of the time.
Q: I’m looking for a ____ Hat. I checked your product catalog and didn’t see it. Can you make it?
A: In most cases, yes. I’m sure you can appreciate it’s just not possible to show all the different variations of crowns and brims. If it’s made from fur-felt and you can supply us a good picture – yes we can make it.
Generally we already carry the same style of hat, we just shape it based on the photo or if it’s a movie hat we shape it from watching the movie and seeing the hat from all possible angles to get the look just so. We can do up to a 6″ (inch) high crown and a 5″ wide brim. click for the rest of our hat facts
We recommend all customers who OWN a good hat, get a hat stretcher. It Is a small cost for a tool that will help keep ALL your hats fitting properly. As well, if you only wear your hat seldom; or have a number of hats you wear, you will find our wooden hat stretcher a valuable addition to maintaining the perfect shape of your custom cowboy hat. ~ Order a Hat Stretcher
Like all hat and leather products, our hat stretchers are made in America.
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