Blog - Author Rusty Beauquet

Here’s why the characters in my classic western stories never wear blue jeans.

I know today that denim jeans are the look that is probably the most recognizably “cowboy,” but, in actuality, it’s the least historically accurate. Most cowboys, especially early on during the period historians recognize as the Wild West didn’t wear jeans. Levi Strauss and company didn’t start selling blue jeans until 1873. Before that and even much later, cowboys mostly wore secondhand heavy wool trousers or sometimes lighter weight canvas pants in the hot summer months.

The First Levis

Few, if any, businesses in America have captured a place in the minds of Americans the way Levi Strauss and company have. While many companies manufacture denim jeans today, Levis is not only a household word. Instead, the name alone has come to mean a piece of clothing absolutely de rigeur to the American west.

The company traces its origin to the California Gold Rush days, when Levi Strauss, a 24-year-old Bavarian immigrant, began making pants almost as an afterthought. Drawn west from New York in 1850 by the gold fever, Strauss arrived in San Francisco with a stock of dry goods, including canvas for tents and wagon covers. But, as it turned out, the miners wanted neither. “You should’ve brought pants,” an old prospector allegedly advised Strauss. “Pants don’t wear worth a hoot up in the diggins. Can’t get a pair strong enough to last.” So, Levi Strauss converted the canvas into sturdy pants with the iconic copper rivets designed to reinforce them at the strain points like pockets.

Blue Jeans Didn't Become a "Cowboy" Staple Until Years After the First Jeans Appeared

In a nutshell, the originator of what has become a symbol of American western culture manufactured canvas pants for gold miners for many years before manufacturing blue jeans. Miners liked the durable pants but complained that they tended to chafe. So Strauss substituted a twilled cotton cloth from France called “serge de Nimes” in 1873, the fabric that later became known as denim, and the pants were nicknamed blue jeans.

For the most part, Old West cowboys did not wear blue jeans. Denim jeans did not become normal cowboy garb until well into the early 1900s. Even once Levi jeans became available in about 1873, most cowboys could not afford to buy them even if they could find them. Your typical cowboy was too broke to afford such a luxury. Earning about forty dollars per month, they were impoverished and lucky to have a meal from the chuck wagon to keep from starving. But the durability, comfort, and fit of denim jeans made them very popular as the century progressed and became more widely distributed.

Behind the Myth

So, why did most of us grow up believing blue jeans were a cowboy clothing staple? Two reasons. First, Hollywood popularized cowboys wearing jeans when leading actors like John Wayne wore the iconic Levi 501s® in westerns films and television programs. Cowboys wearing jeans on the silver screen became a classic example of life imitating art. Also, in the 1930s, Levi Strauss and company began sponsoring rodeos. And that truly cemented jeans as authentic cowboy wear.

Levi’s were born in the American West. These tough pants eventually became a staple garment for ranchers and others doing hard manual labor for generations. Cowboys were among the first to wear Levis, but not until the twilight years of what we consider the Wild West days. So, now you know why the cowboy characters in my books are never wearing blue jeans. It would be historically inaccurate.

Welcome to the first installment of “facts behind the writing.”

As a western fiction writer, I’ve taken a few liberties with historical facts in my stories. However, I see nothing wrong with doing so as long as the historical departure adds something to the story. After all, I write fiction, not Old West history books.

As an example, in The Reckoning, the first novel in the Lone Rider classic western series, set in 1881, the setting is a little town on the west bank of the Pecos River called Dead Horse Crossing. You won’t find the town in history books or on old maps because it’s purely fictional. My inspiration for the town name where the story takes place is a real geographical feature, Horsehead Crossing.

Horsehead Crossing is a ford on the Pecos River in present-day Crane County, Texas, south of Odessa. Horsehead Crossing was the primary crossing on the Pecos for the Comanche Trail from the Llano Estacado south to Mexico. It was probably a prehistoric crossing by earlier Native Americans. In 1858, the crossing became an important stop on the Butterfield Overland Mail route from St. Louis to San Francisco. And in 1866, Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving blazed their famous cattle trail, the Goodnight-Loving Trail, which came to this point and turned upriver.

Some attribute the source of the name “Horsehead” to horse skulls said to have marked the banks. That may have been because the Comanches marked the crossing with the skulls for easier identification. Or the abundance of skulls might have come from the many animals that died at the crossing from drowning, quicksand, or over-drinking while being driven along the Comanche Trail returning from Mexico. The ford is shown not as Horsehead but as “Dead Horse” Crossing on some old maps.

One thing I try to present as historically factual is the type of weapons used in the wild west days during the period I set my stories in. Fans of Old West tales likely know that the infamous Gunfight at the O.K. Corral occurred in 1881. Much disagreement exists about exactly what pistol models the Earps, Holliday, and the members of the Clanton gang used that fateful day. But most knowledgeable people agree most of the participants probably carried and used single-action revolvers, most likely the 1873 Colt Single Action Army Revolver. So, that’s why I chose that model as the gun Ian Murphy, the book’s (The Reckoning) main character, carries and uses. If any gun conjures up the image of the Old West, it’s Colt’s legendary 1873 model. From the time Colt introduced it, it became a favorite of both good and bad hombres of the period.

Colt produced its first double-action revolver in 1877. But the complex and inefficient lockworks the company used broke easily and was difficult to replace. So, because of that inherent flaw, many of those who carried guns in 1881 didn’t immediately migrate from single action to Colts to the newer double-action models. And that’s why in many television and movie westerns, the cowboys are still cocking or “fanning” their single-action Colts to fire them.

Thanks for reading. I plan to post background information here regularly about things that appear in my books. Next time, I’ll share some facts about the setting of the second book in the Lone Rider series, Comanche Gap, that I hope readers will find interesting.