| |
 Welcome Duane Dewsbury.
(If you're not Duane Dewsbury, click here.)
|
What
better piece of
apparel to adorn your western outfit than a nice cowboy hat?
CowPokeHats.com is the best place to find the perfect cowboy
hat.
With many brands and styles you are sure to find the cowboy
hat
to suit your needs and desires. Whether it be a Beaver Brand
Cowboy Hat, a Bullhide Cowboy Hat, a nice Stetson Cowboy Hat or a
Bailey or Eddy Brothers Cowboy Hat, you will find them here.
We
have western hats for men, women and for children too! Many
like
getting a cowboy hat from CowPokeHats.com for their performances in
Horse Shows, Rodeos, State Fairs, or to just compliment a nice dressy
western outfit. If it's a Cowboy Hat that you are looking
for,
you have come to the right place. Please select brands and
styles
from our menus bars at the top of the website. And thank you
for
shopping our website for your Cowboy Hat!
The Western cowboy hat
is recognized around the world as part of "cowboy" lore. It is the
defining piece of attire for farm and ranch workers in the western
areas of North America as well as northern Mexico.
The concept of a broad-brimmed hat with a
high crown worn by a rider on horseback came primarily from the
tradition of the Mexican vaquero. However, the cowboy hat as known
today has many antecedants to its design, including Mexican hats such
as the sombrero and galan, the various designs of wide-brimmed hat worn
by farmers and stockmen in the eastern United States, as well as the
design used by the United States Cavalry.
The shape of a cowboy hat once depended very
much on the region that it originated from. At one time a person could
tell where a working cowboy was from just by looking at the crease in
their hat. John B. Stetson is credited with designing and marketing the
first "cowboy" hat in the USA, which he called the "Boss of the Plains."
In the early days, the cowboy hat was valued
for being functional, with the wide brim protecting working cowboys
from the sun and rain. It could be used to signal others, fan a
campfire, or pull water out of a stream. Today, while the hats can
still serve these purposes, most people wear them for aesthetic value
as a part of Western lifestyle. A cowboy hat even appears on the flag
of Calgary, Alberta.
Today, classic designs are available in
muted colors such as black and various shades of brown and gray,
notably a warm light gray known as "silver belly." Styles for men and
women are virtually identical, though women's cowboy hats are available
in a much wider variety of colors.
The name ten-gallon hat does not refer to
use of the hat as a container. In Mexico, the Spanish term tan
galan means "so gallant" and refers to a galan,
meaning a "gallant" or young, upper-class "leading man", who
customarily wore such hats (as opposed to the Mexican sombrero).