56 texashighways.com
It’s hard to pin down the exact birthplace of the cowboy boot,
but for my money the Rio Grande Valley is the spot. By the 1790s,
formal ranches were established in New Spain, north of the Rio
Grande, in what is now South Texas. Cowboy culture flourished
in this cattle country. Zapateros (shoemakers) working along the
Rio Grande began making leather boots, plus saddles, lariats, hats,
spurs, and chaps. These items were essential to the vaqueros, just
as they would be to the American cowboys who drove great herds
northward from South Texas in the years after the Civil War.
As part of teaching American cowboys how to be cowboys, va-
queros showed them what kind of boots were best for a life spent
in the saddle while herding fierce Longhorns that had little in com-
mon with today’s docile beef cattle. Their preference: sleek, leather-
soled boots that could slide out of a stirrup easily, with tall shafts
to protect the calves from brush scrapes and snakebites.
This history is heavy on my mind as I approach my first stop,
Raymondville, where I will visit Armando’s Boot Co., the shop of
Armando Duarte Rios and his son, Armando Jr. The Rios family
has made boots for both vaqueros and cowboys for more than 150
years. Family history holds that at least as far back as 1853, a Rios
was working as a leather tanner and maker of saddles and sandals
for granjeros (farmers) in Nuevo Leon, Mexico. By the mid-1860s,
another Rios was building boots for Mexican army troops loyal to
Emperor Maximilian I.
The family relocated to the Rio Grande Valley in 1925, and
in 1928 brothers Abraham and Zeferino Rios opened Rios Boot
Company in Raymondville. A year later, disagreement between
the two led Zeferino to break away and open his own shop in
Mercedes, 40 miles south. Zeferino would sell to investors from
West Texas in the late ’60s, establishing Rios of Mercedes, a cor-
porate boot factory that to this day turns out thousands of pairs
of boots a year.
Meanwhile, Abraham continued to operate Rios Boot Com-
pany in Raymondville, with a clientele that included Los Ki-
neños, the vaqueros on King Ranch. In time, Abraham’s nephew,
Armando Duarte Rios, began working for his uncle, learning
family bootmaking traditions. Rios Boot Company would even-
tually fold, but in 1982 Armando opened Armando’s Boot Co.,
where I’m stopping.
At Falfurrias, I take State Highway 285 over to US 77, then head
south again. This route takes me across the Norias Division of the
King Ranch and into Raymondville, a town founded by a King
Ranch division manager. The town is still steeped in vaquero
and cowboy culture. Like most communities in the Valley, Ray-
mondville is growing, yet it’s still a safe distance from the urban
sprawl of the McAllen metro area 50 miles southwest.
Armando’s Boot Co. is easy to find along US 77—the big cowboy
boot on the roof giving it away. Armando Jr., a 50-something withgray in his hair and whiskers, greets me. His dad, Armando, who is
in his late 70s, still puts in full days at the shop, but Armando Jr. is
heavily involved with the operation of the business, answering the
phone, greeting customers, and keeping the books. If there’s time
left, he works on boots himself. “That’s my real love,” Armando Jr.
says. “I’d rather be back in the shop.”
In short order, I have my traveling boots off and Armando Jr. is
tracing outlines of my feet on paper. Then he records measure-
ments he takes of my feet, ankles, and calves. This all goes into a
file folder, which he and his father will use when it’s time to actu-
ally begin construction of my boots. But for now, the paperworkAs fiNe and
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