LITTLE’S: BEST SOLES IN TEXAS
“Same Family. Same Business. Since 1915.“
In 1915, Lucien Little, a traveling shoe salesman covering Southwest Texas, decided to settle down and opened a shop in San Antonio selling and repairing shoes. It would evolve into one of the finest custom boot makers in America. Little started making tough, durable boots for ranchers and working cowboys, which gained a well-earned reputation for endurance and good fit.
In the 1940’s, Little and his sons began designing fancy boots for local cattle kings known as “saddle dandies” for their love of extravagantly inlaid boots with high underslung heels and intricately tooled inlays of 1920’s Wild West icons – longhorns, playing cards, cactuses, flowers, eagles.
About this time, Hollywood was working overtime to satisfy the public’s appetite for glitzy Westerns with singing cowboys and cowgirls – Gene Autry, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. What America saw on the silver screen was what it wanted to wear – Western boots with over-the-top designs and heavy embellishments. And boot makers like Little’s were happy to feed that appetite as well. Forty years later, Urban Cowboy hit the big screen and cowboy boots were once again the hottest ticket in town.
Five generation and over a hundred years later, the Littles are still big on boots, making some of the world’s finest custom boots the old-fashioned way – very, very well.
Nearly half of the boot makers working in Little’s factory have remained dedicated to the company for well over a quarter of a century. Little jokes that his workers have been with him since he took over, and he will not let them retire until after he does. “To make a good quality boot you have to have great material, and with great material you have to have great quality craftsmen”, Little observes. These workers, according to Little, are few and far between.
It takes a team of twelve master craftsmen, using centuries old methods, to make a boot good enough to be called a Little boot. Bottom men build the sole, stack the heels, and hand mold the pointed toes by skivving the leather with a shard of glass to make it disappear flawlessly into the vamp. Top men crimp the shaft, hand stitch the collar in dense rows that hold the boot upright, then overlay a contrasting pattern so deftly it appears to be painted on. By the time the finisher feather-sands, primps and polishes the boot to the luster of a new car, it has undergone more than 100 processes
Dave Little is said to make the best soles in Texas – a mighty big claim to live up to. ”He uses an old European process of burnishing, and it leaves the bottoms of his boots as beautiful as the tops – like finely waxed floors,” according to Jim Arndt.
And then there’s the legendary fit. ”Never trust a custom bootmaker who tells you his boots need to be broken in. When you leave here, you should be able to forget you have anything on your feet,” Little insists.
You may forget, but your insurance agent won’t, with Dave Little boots starting at $750 and going up to God-knows-what. And well worth every penny. As one customer says, “Visiting Little’s boots is like visiting family, only more fun and less fighting. His boots are works of art”.