David Gallegos · History

Why collectors care

David Gallegos was a Santa Fe, New Mexico custom bootmaker. Collectors meet his name through Square Deal shop lore, orthopedic last work, and a 1996 Journal Record profile that named celebrity lasts in the shop. Those lasts are reputation evidence, not pair certificates.

He belongs under Bootmakers. Square Deal was a custom bench and shoe-repair shop, not a production factory.

Biography

David Ernest Gallegos was born on 17 June 1926 in Center, Colorado, to Manuel and Lillie Gallegos. The Rivera Family Funeral Home obituary records that he graduated from St. Michael’s High School in Santa Fe in 1944, played varsity football there, served as a United States Merchant Marine, and later married his high-school sweetheart Helen. They raised three children in Santa Fe. Every sourced address for the shop is in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

His father opened Square Deal about 1930 in a storefront on Burro Alley in downtown Santa Fe. The Journal Record (3 December 1996) adds that the elder Gallegos had intended machinist training in Colorado, found those classes full, took shoemaking instead, opened first in Colorado, and moved to Santa Fe when customers could not pay. David took over in the 1960s and made handmade leather boots, shoes, belts, and purses. Jennifer June’s Dim Lights directory, posted August 2005, lists the later shop as 1911 St. Michael’s Drive, Suite C, Santa Fe, NM 87505, telephone (505) 982-6469.

Art Edison, writing in 2011 about earlier student years at Square Deal, describes Dave Gallegos as outgoing, with a large waxed handlebar mustache, and recalls the messy Burro Alley bench before the later, tidier St. Michael’s Drive shop. The obituary describes him as one of the Southwest’s finer bootmakers, with clientele “from New Mexico to Hollywood,” and records that he retired in 2010. He died suddenly in Santa Fe on 26 October 2018, at age 92, and was buried at Santa Fe National Cemetery. He was preceded by Helen and son David Gallegos II and survived by daughters Velma Sanchez and Sandra Gallegos Payne.