I had a nice day today out slogging around an old ranch that is now a State Wildlife Area. There is a layer of snow on about 2/3 of the ground and the remaining clear areas are either rocky ground or melted pasture that is thin dead grass over mud.

I was stomping along in my modern boots with tread, waterproof sole, and gore-tex lining. Add gaiters and I had pretty happy feet even in the difficult conditions. (great workout!)

I've read a book about the people who made this ranch and their life in the 1920's so as I move about the area I think of how it was for them.

So- What kind of footwear was used 100 years ago?

I imagine that since it was a cattle ranch that the owner rode his horse pretty much everywhere so he wasn't slogging in the muck for hours.... but when down on the ground fencing or whatever, I imagine that leather cowboy boots got pretty wet pretty quickly. Then they needed to be dried that evening.

Was that how they did it? Wet feet all day and dry your boots over the fire at night and replace the boots frequently (if you can)?

In the south, into the early 1900s boys didn't often get shoes until they were considered men, 16-18 years old. Only rich folk's kids wore shoes. Adults from poorer families often only wore shoes in the winter. Or going to formal settings like church. This saved wear and tear on what was a very expensive item. Shoes were handed down, resoled and patched. Girls in poor families might never get shoes. Barefoot and pregnant wasn't so much a rural stereotype as simply a fact of life.

This lasted well into the 60s in pockets of poverty. America, and Kennedy in particular, was appalled by the third-world poverty of Appalachians, rural Alabama, Mississippi.

Rural folks, contrary to the mythology from Disney, were often sickly and weak. One of the reasons for this was the lack of shoes and the resulting parasitism.

Interesting reading about the rural US in the 30s that shows how important shoes are:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1395801/



Shoes are far more than just a handy way of avoiding thorns or staying warm. They save lives and protect the vitality of populations. It has been far less than 100 years that they have been nearly universal in the US. Like universally safe food and water they are recent arrivals on the scene.

One thing you see in pictures are laced leather boots that came up to mid calf. I briefly wore a pair of my father's from that era. One interesting aspect was that they had slick leather soles, a rather bad feature.

Other than that, they weren't too bad and the quality of the leather was excellent. Offhand, I'll bet people took good care of the boots and applied dressings to keep them relatively waterproof.

If I am not mistaken, the LL Bean shoepac, the type with the rubber lower boot, dates from around 1910. Climbers and loggers wore boots with nailed soles, which must have been a little rough when worn indoors.

Spiked boots were murder on flooring. I can remember as a little kid, we still had a store in my town that hadn't really changed other than to add electricity since the 1920s. (Inventory hadn't changed much either, which is why they are gone, but I do miss their selection of wool.) They had a sign saying that spiked boots were forbidden in the store, but stocking feet were acceptable.

It was in english, french and what I think was italian, FWIW.

Once when were in the Yukon, we had the opportunity to talk with a shoemaker who handmade boots and shoes exactly like the footwear that people wore during the Klondike Gold Rush. The shoemaker sold these shoes and boots to tourists who paid a handsome price.

I recall looking at and trying on a pair of boots and it struck me that even though the workmanship was excellent, the boots were very uncomfortable as there was no arch support or padding of any type and with no tread whatsoever on the soles.

The shoemaker told us that in the winter, those would be gold seekers who could not afford better and fur insulated boots often purchased boots 2-3 sizes bigger then they needed so that they could wear multiple pairs of socks in an attempt to keep their feet warm in temperatures down to -50F. Often the boots would get wet and freeze solid on the men's feet and there was a lot of frozen toes that had to be amputated every winter.

To this day, whenever I go out in the winter and walk through snow and ice cold water in my modern waterproof and insulated boots, I cannot help but think of how those old timers endured the crude footwear more then a century ago.

BTW, the spiked or nailed soled boots mentioned by a couple of posters, these boots are often called cork or caulk boots in my AO. Though not as popular as they used to be, there are still a lot of these boots to be found in many of the northen men's workwear supply stores.

"So- What kind of footwear was used 100 years ago?"

It was more or less like today's regular shoes, custom-made by hand, and relatively expensive. Most were preserved or waterproofed using what was locally available, probably mainly beeswax and tallow.

From Wikipedia: "Since medieval times, dubbin, a waxy product, was used to soften and waterproof leather; however, it did not impart shine. It was made from natural wax, oil, soda ash and tallow."

A former coworker was involved with the Society for Creative Anacronism (SCA) and she had told me about dubbin, but I had forgotten the word and had to look it up.

Sue

Thanks for the interesting responses! I looked up hobnails and caulks and it appears that a woodsman would be wearing either of those but would still have to attend to dressing and drying the boots very frequently. I suppose campfires also were for drying socks and boots as well as heating coffee.

I've read that the Apache had a dual-mocassin system where they had very soft inner slippers used like socks covered with much rougher duty footwear and leggings.

The country I'm hiking in is shortgrass prairie with short cacti and rattlesnakes. It's noplace to be barefoot if there is a choice. (no rattlesnakes about on a a snow-muddy day though)
It's really not even a sound idea to wear fabric boots due to the cacti.

We sure have it easy. My boots are all dry thanks to my Peet boot dryer and the boots being mostly synthetic materials....

I've experienced cactus spines piercing leather boots (although they pierce canvas a lot deeper). I had a flat once from a mesquite thorn piercing a truck tire.

British Army Ammunition boots, they have been around since the late Victorian era.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammunition_boots

You can still pick up unused unissued boots today,

http://www.springfields.co.uk/military-equipment/special-interest/ww2/?id=1161&largeimg=1

My mom tells stories from the hills of KY in the late 50s early 60s that most children wore no shoes during the summer and got a pair in the fall that they wore until it got warm enough to go barefoot again.

Shoes were repaired many times and handed down.

AFAIK, while we were living there, we all wore shoes year round. But we were Yankees just living there temporarily.

I do know that running around barefoot in tropical climes is definitely not a good idea. I picked up a terrible case of impetigo from running in the jungles in the Philippines-trying to live up to my name LOL
In the Americas, after the civil war, most of the veterans were no doubt wearing their brogans or cavalry boots from their military days. These were rather like modern chukka boots in height and had a leather sole. Surely they wore down quickly and needed frequent repair.

I'm sure you all aren't surprised that this discussion has caused me to consider the condition of my various boots and thus to buy several pairs of new ones.

There is NO substitute for durable footwear when things get difficult.

Agree entirely, crude footwear could be manufactured locally in or after any long term disaster, but would be far inferior to that which can be purchased cheaply at present.

The making or mending of footwear is very time consuming if done by hand, and therefore expensive.

I keep 10 pairs of unworn shoes to hand and several pairs of boots. The shoes that I buy are cheap and dont last that well, but ample stocks allow for replacements.

Shoes that have holes in the soles can sometimes be repaired simply and if not watertight can be reserved for indoor or dry weather use.

They also float, which is handy if your country is below sea level.

On a ranch in the 1920's - probably fairly plain leather "cowboy" boots with leather soles. When they got wet, your feet were wet until they dried out. (Nobody said being a cowboy was easy.)

By the 1920's they were probably "store bought" or mail order. Today we usually treat boots as disposable items. i.e you wear them out and throw them away. In years past most small towns had a shoe shop where you could get shoes or boots repaired at a resonable price. When the leather soles wore out, you would take them in and get them resoled for much less than buying a new pair.

Search for "CIVIL WAR SUTLERS" and you will find sites that sell reproductions of the Civil War cavalry boot. These would have been typical for the mid to late 1800's. The style that is more typical of the "modern" cowboy boot (high heals, pointed toes) developed in the late 1800's to early 1900's.

You actually picked an odd period.
between the late 1800s and the early 1900s shoe manufacturing became industrialized.
Before 1890 you could get custom made boots from a cobbler or make your own.
They varied from very crude to very fine.
The crude versions were often made the same for both feet. Not right and left like we expect now.

By about 1910 you could order a wide selection of boots from the Sear's catalog.

I'm sure all periods are odd to those who follow.

The ranch I've been walking was mostly developed by a man who drove freight into the mountains to the west by wagon and sledge about 1900. Then he started building his cattle ranch about 1910 after working for some local ranchers to learn the business. The ranchstead was abandoned in the 1940's and they moved to a different house on the property (closer to a road and maybe a better house though that one was torn down in the 1970's when it became a State Wildlife Area). (Learned all this thru a book titled RABBIT CREEK COUNTRY by Jon Thiem)


I find walks in desolate places much more interesting if I know someone has tried to make a living there in primitive conditions as it gives me lots of things to think about. Which is how the question about footwear came about.....

I agree about finding it interesting to wonder how people did things before.
I remember going to the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto a few years ago.
They have an online exhibition too.
http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/Exhibitions/Ground/english/sitemap.html

One of the things I thought odd was some of the earlier shoes were not made right or left foot. they were made with straight soles and square cut toes so they could be worn on either foot.