Hyer Boot Company · History

Why collectors care

Hyer Boot Company is the historic Olathe, Kansas manufacturing house that grew from Charles H. Hyer’s shop. Collectors need this page to stop collapsing three different objects: the founding artisan, the Kansas factory that sold in 1977, and the later Olathe Boot Company line now handmade in Mercedes, Texas.

A 2020s consumer pair marked HYER is a separate relaunch. It is not a 1910 Hyer factory boot.

Company history

Kansapedia dates the founding story to 1875, when a cowboy asked Charles H. Hyer for a first-class pair of boots. After discarding two unsatisfactory pairs, Hyer delivered a third that pleased the rider. Letters followed from across the West, and brother Ed joined the shop. The brothers developed a mail-order measurement chart so remote ranch customers could order by mail.

By 1900 the workforce had grown from two people to about fifteen. A three-story brick building opened in 1903, an adjacent hotel was converted in 1914, and a new 23,000-square-foot plant opened in 1964. During World War I the house made officers’ boots for Fort Leavenworth and Camp Funston. By the 1960s more than seventy people made boots for a worldwide clientele.

Sons and grandsons of C. H. Hyer operated the company until 1977, when it was sold to Ben Miller Boot Company of El Paso. Kansapedia records that Miller moved the equipment to El Paso and later brought the Hyer name back in the 1990s. Olathe Boot Company is a related later line, not the same corporation.