Justin is the boot your grandfather might have ordered by mail, and the company has the paperwork to prove that was possible. It has been in Texas since before Texas had many paved roads, and it still behaves like it.
Where it started
Herman Joseph Justin was born in 1859, the son of a cigar maker who expected him to take over the business.1 In 1877, at 18, he took a train from Lafayette, Indiana, to Texas and apprenticed at a shoe shop in Gainesville.1 In 1879 he moved to Spanish Fort, a town on the Chisholm Trail, and started repairing boots inside a local barbershop. The barbershop’s owner, Frank See, put up $35 on the promise of “the best boots in the world,” and Justin Boots began.1 The first pair went to See, and the company says he wore them from 1879 until 1905.1
Justin is credited with being the first to sew rows of stitching across boot tops to stiffen the leather and stop the shaft folding down toward the ankle.1 It is decoration that started as engineering, which is how the best decoration starts.
His wife, Annie, developed a made-to-measure chart and order card for cattlemen passing through, and the company began taking mail orders.1 When the railroad arrived in 1889, the business moved to Nocona; in 1908 it became H.J. Justin and Sons, and after H.J. died in 1918 his sons moved headquarters to Fort Worth.1 Justin merged with Acme Brick in 1968 to form Justin Industries, which Berkshire Hathaway bought in 2000.1 The company also says it created the roper style.1 Today it names its factory in El Paso.1
Over the years the group took in other names. Justin Industries bought Nocona Boots in 1981, Chippewa in 1984 and Tony Lama in 1990.2
Arena credentials
Justin has sponsored the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association for many years, and the Justin Sportsmedicine Team has treated injured rodeo athletes on site since its debut at the National Finals Rodeo in 1980.2 The Justin Cowboy Crisis Fund, set up in 1989, gives financial help to injured rodeo athletes.2 These are working credentials, not a celebrity list.
How Justin fits
Justin’s guidance: a cowboy boot should be snug but not uncomfortably tight, with a slight heel slip of a quarter to half an inch and a firm feel around the instep.3 The warning signs it lists are cramped or curled toes, pinching across the instep, no heel slip at all (too small), and numbness or tingling after wear.3 New boots feel stiff out of the box; the leather softens and stretches with time.3
A second Justin guide adds that you should hear a pop as the foot slides in, that toes should move freely, and that a traditional narrow toe box may be the problem if a boot feels tight, in which case a square or round toe may fit better.4 Wear the socks you plan to wear with the boots when you try them on.4 That guide also gives a larger heel-slip figure than the first; we go with the quarter to half inch from the dedicated fit guide.
What to buy first
A roper. Justin counts the style among its own contributions to the form.1 Get it in a dark brown or black smooth leather and wear it under jeans with the hem broken once. When you want a taller western, you will know your Justin size already.
The Boots floor carries the Justin styles we have checked. Every buy goes through our link and the retailer is the seller.
Footnotes
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The Justin Story, Justin Boots. The site blocks automated fetches; read via the Wayback Machine capture of 2026-07-29. Checked 2026-10-21. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11
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Justin Boots, Wikipedia. Checked 2026-10-21. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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Cowboy Boot Fit Guide: Should Cowboy Boots Be Tight?, Justin Boots. Read via the Wayback Machine capture of 2025-09-05. Checked 2026-10-21. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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How Should Cowboy Boots Fit, Justin Boots. Read via the Wayback Machine capture of 2025-08-13. Checked 2026-10-21. ↩ ↩2
