Our History

"Paul Bond is proud of the custom boots he makes and so too are the cowboys who wear them. Handmade Boots can tell you a lot about the man wearing them, just like the way he creases his hat, or the kind of saddle he rides.

You can spot Paul Bond's stitching patterns on custom made boot-tops and his distinctive high, underslung heels through the dust across a branding pen, or out on the dance floor of a dim, smoky bar on Saturday night. These are custom made cowboy boots that are made to be worn with your pant legs tucked inside the tops. The story is that some boys even traded in their old batwing leggins' for chinks just so they could show off the custom boots Paul Bond Boots handmade for them.

Paul Bond knew about cowboys. He grew up on the family ranch near Carlsbad, New Mexico. By the age of sixteen he was breaking horses for a cavalry remount station, riding bareback broncs at area rodeos, and learning custom boot making at a local saddle shop. Rodeo lured him off his home range and he started going down the road to all the big shows from Fort Worth and Boston, to New York's Madison Square Garden. He rode bareback horses and also worked up a contract act featuring trick and Roman riding. In the off-seasons, he continued to make custom boots and in the mid-1940s opened a custom made boots shop back in Carlsbad. He moved the outfit to Nogales, Arizona in 1957.

Fit good and look good pretty well sums up Paul's approach to more than sixty-five years of boot making. Some folks are impressed by the long list of movie actors, politicians, corporate executives, and country music stars who wear Paul's handmade boots. But his greatest satisfaction always has and always will be in the custom made boots he makes for cowboys."

Paul Bond left us in February of 2012. His legacy lives on.