Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
By Barbara McAllister
Word of the Day: Ten-gallon hat
Despite a common misconception, a 10-gallon hat does not refer to the liquid volume the hat can hold. Ten gallons equals 40 quarts of water, which would weigh more than 80 pounds. That’s as much as a large dog or four car tires. That’s a pretty big hat for a two-pint head. Even the largest cowboy hat can only hold a few quarts at most. Though Stetson had a famous ad showing a cowboy giving his thirsty horse a drink from the crown of his hat, it’s not certain anyone would want to ruin a $500 hat by filling it with water.
The gallon in 10-gallon most likely came from an anglicized version of a Spanish word cowboys picked up from their Mexican counterparts who wore braided hatbands on their sombreros called galóns. A 10-galón sombrero was a hat with a crown large enough to have a hatband with ten braids. It may have come from another Spanish phrase, tan galan, meaning “so gallant,” another reference to the appearance of an impressive hat. Either way, a 10-gallon hat is not a measurement of volume.
The iconic cowboy hat wasn’t worn by most cowboys until the late 1800s, when John Stetson made a broadbrimmed hat copying the protection provided by sombreros. Many early cowboys were immigrants or Civil War veterans who wore their customary hat when they went west. This included everything from top hats, Civil War headgear and flat caps to sailor hats. The bowler or derby hat was the most popular headgear in the old American West. Bowlers had the advantage of staying on the head in windy conditions, were mass-produced in felt and were relatively cheap. Old photos of Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid, Bat Masterson and Billy the Kid all show them wearing bowler hats. It was John B. Stetson, a hatmaker born in New Jersey, who changed the look of the west. Today, Stetson hats are made in Garland, Texas, but the Stetson factory in Philadelphia once covered nine acres. It closed in 1971, but Philadelphia still has Stetson Street, Stetson Middle School and Stetson Mansion to mark the one-time Eastern empire built by iconic Western wear
