Cowtown · History

Why collectors care

Cowtown is an El Paso factory-direct cowboy and exotic house. Collectors meet numbered official styles and vintage pairs bought at the Interstate 10 factory store, which also sells other makers.

This page is a manufacturing company card. A pair purchased at Cowtown is not automatically a Cowtown boot.

Company history

Cowtown’s official About page does not print a founding year. It says every Cowtown boot is handmade from start to finish in the company’s own factories, hand-trimmed and hand-lasted, and inspected at each step. The same page places a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing facility and headquarters on Interstate 10 in El Paso, with a 50,000-square-foot factory store. Joey Calcaterra signs the page. The printed address is 11451 Gateway West, El Paso, Texas 79936.

The Better Business Bureau El Paso file records Business Started Locally: 1/1/1962. El Paso Times (10 January 2023) identifies Paul Calcaterra as owner and quotes him thanking El Paso “through the past 60 years that we’ve been here.” A directory comment naming Joe and Paul Calcaterra as 1962 founders is not locked here.

Jose Luis Sanchez later listed contract work for Cowtown among other El Paso houses. That is a people credit, not a Champion or Sanchez stamp on a Cowtown pair.