In January, we stand at the frontier of a new year. Obviously, there's no better month to remember that other mythic uncharted territory, the American frontier of the Old West! In the Western classic The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a newspaper editor famously says, "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." But that attitude has led to a lot of frontier lore that's just plain loco. We've asked Jeopardy gunfighter Ken Jennings to separate fact from legend--and print only the facts. Let's see if he can clean up this town.
The Debunker: Did Cowboys Wear Ten-Gallon Hats?
Real talk: no hat can hold ten gallons, not even Pharrell's. Your average Stetson has a maximum carrying capacity of three quarts, just 7.5% of what's advertised. Not sure why you'd want to carry liquid in your hat, cowpokes, but "let the buyer beware" is all I'm saying.
The "ten gallon" thing, most historians agree, started out not a bad measurement but as a bad translation. Mexican cowboys (vaqueros, where we get our word "buckaroos") wore hats with braided trimming around the crown. These bands are called galloons--or, in Spanish, galónes. A ten-galón hat was one with an especially wide band. The term got bastardized into English as "ten-gallon hat" in the 1920s.
Texans: I need you to stop reading now, because what I'm about to say next will rock your world. The iconic oversized Stetson hat that we all imagine built the West? It wasn't standard-issue cowboy wear at all. People on the frontier wore the hats that suited their jobs, whether that was a flat wool cap or a Mexican sombrero. By far the most common, based on photographs of the time, seems to have been the round-domed bowler hat, also called a "derby" in America. Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid, Butch Cassidy...all fans of the Chaplinesque bowler. Sorry if your favorite lawman or outlaw looked like a citified dude. They were just products of their time.
Quick Quiz: Robert John Burck, aka the "Naked Cowboy," is best known for wearing a cowboy hat, boots, and briefs as a street fixture at what landmark?
Ken Jennings is the author of six books, most recently his Junior Genius Guides, Because I Said So!, and Maphead. He's also the proud owner of an underwhelming Bag o' Crap. Follow him at ken-jennings.com or on Twitter as @KenJennings.