Before it became shorthand for rugged individualism—before it rode cattle drives and drifted across the silver screen—the cowboy hat was a practical fix to a stubborn problem. At the center of that solution was John B. Stetson, a New Jersey hatter’s son who turned utility into legend.
Stetson was born in 1830 in Orange, New Jersey, into a family of hat makers. His father, Stephen Stetson, made hats the old way, by hand, and John learned early how raw fibers could be coaxed into form. It was skilled work, but not glamorous. Nothing about his beginnings suggested he would help define the look of the American West.
