Regaining his health over the next few years, John noticed something about the West: The hats sucked. Fur traders of European descent often wore bug-infested, brimless coonskin caps. Folks who made their way to Missouri from Texas and Mexico, meanwhile, tended to wear wide-brimmed straw hats that protected from the sun but leaked in the rain. So, after returning to the northeast with his consumption under control, John B. Stetson created a new sort of hat, which in time came to be known as the cowboy hat. (And even, sometimes, the Stetson.)[*]
