by Gene Fowler 

Prosser Martin, Del Rio’s Cowboy Outfitter 

“If made of leather, we make it” 

The late Prosser Martin of Del Rio, Texas, first crossed my radar in the 1980s, when I read a book about Dr. John R. Brinkley, the border town’s notorious Goat Gland Man and radio station tycoon of the 1930s. “Prosser Martin, the nation’s most widely recognized cowboy outfitter and dealer in fancy saddles and leather goods, once made a traveling bag for the doctor,” wrote Gerald Carson in The Roguish World of Doctor Brinkley. “It was a fancy job. A Masonic-lodge emblem was hand-tooled on one side. The doctor’s radio station call letters were outlined in silver wire on the other.” 

When Dr. Brinkley asked the price of the completed bag, Martin told him, “Well Doctor, you charge $750 for one operation. I’m just going to operate on you for one operation.” 

While Brinkley became (and remains) famous as the surgeon who developed an oddball medical procedure known as the Goat Gland Transplant (an early agricultural version of Viagra), a visitor to Martin’s saddle and cowpoke emporium during its run from the early 1920s to his retirement in 1961, would have marveled at the images of his much more famous friends that filled the walls. He made saddles for singing cowboys, for movie stars and rodeo champs, and for presidents of the U.S. and Mexico. An in-demand rodeo announcer, he enlivened cowboy tournaments from the dustiest one-horse Texas towns all the way to Madison Square Garden. 

As one reporter noted in 1936, “He carries the cowboy vernacular as do few persons in the country.” 

In the 1990s, legendary Del Rio ranchwoman Rose Mary Whitehead Jones told me that Prosser Martin was “the Will Rogers of Southwest Texas.” Rosie didn’t elaborate, but consider, for example, this witty response to a second 1963 burglary of his home while Prosser and his wife Jonell were out of town. After explaining that the thieves had cleaned them out during the earlier break-in, he quipped to the local press, “They left a note saying, ‘You should have accumulated more, a man of your age.’” 

Del Rio rancher Martin Wardlaw, a relative of the Cowboy Outfitter, whose first name pays homage to the Martin family, likens his legend to that of another western icon. “Prosser was our John Wayne. But at the same time, he had this childlike quality. He was like a big kid his whole life.” 

Prosser Martin was born in Ozona, Texas, in 1896, according to his obituary in the January 8, 1970 edition of the Del Rio News-Herald. When Prosser and his brother Harold were young teens, their parents died and the boys went to live on a ranch in the Del Rio area owned by one R.W. Prosser. The Martin boys’ papa had worked for Mr. Prosser, and a great nephew of the brothers, rancher Lee Weathersbee, recently confirmed that the pioneer rancher was Prosser Martin’s namesake. Though he later spoke of getting most of his education “behind the barn,” young Prosser attended Staunton Military Academy in Virginia, and, according to his obituary, an unnamed business college in Texas. He served in World War I before opening Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitter in Del Rio in the early years of the Roaring Twenties. 

Folks say that he started the saddle, western wear and ranch-gear business with 50 borrowed bucks, setting up displays in his pickup truck at small-town rodeos and county fairs. “I spent the early part of my life punching cattle and know the goods which are best for practical use,” he asserted in one of his annual catalogs. “My relatives are the owners and operators of several million acres of Texas land and trust my ability to keep their ranches up to date.”   

By one account, Prosser Martin’s first big business break came in 1928, when he exhibited his wares at the San Antonio Rodeo. His career really took off in the 1930s, when he enjoyed semi-annual appearances as the announcer and official Cowboy Outfitter at the Madison Square Garden Rodeo. By 1938, he had mailed out some 40,000 annual catalogs, resulting in orders for saddles and other leather gear from across the U.S. and overseas, and had moved into expanded quarters on Del Rio’s Main Street. Instead of advertising that the store was across the street from the post office, Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitter ads announced, “The post office is just across from us.” 

For a Texas-size minute in 1936, the saddlemaker seemed destined for movie-cowboy stardom after signing a contract with the Fox studios. “They screened Prosser in New York and Boston, took records of his broadcasting over the 18 radio stations on which he worked during the [rodeo] season and decided he was something that would go over big in the box office,” reported the San Angelo Standard Times. The paper noted that at six-foot-four, the Del Rioan would have been “the tallest man in pictures,” since Gary Cooper measured a mere six-foot-three. Elaborating that “Prosser wants to go in for some real acting and not only the outdoor pictures,” the Standard Times opined, “He photographs well and his voice registers pleasingly. He has the look that pictures have lacked since William S. Hart quit them.” 

When Col. W. T. “Tex” Johnson’s Covered Wagon Days Rodeo appeared in Utah’s capital city a few months later, the Salt Lake Tribune confirmed the rodeo announcer’s cinematic appeal, gushing that Martin was “said to be the world’s most handsome cowboy.” Alas, so far as we know, that towering handsomeness never swaggered across the silver screen. 

Prosser’s appearances at rodeos around the country, combined with his colorful catalogs, increased the Cowboy Outfitter’s sales of saddles and other leather goods. But his company’s profile was also surely boosted as the world learned about Del Rio via Doc Brinkley’s superpowered American radio station, XER (later XERA), which blasted from just across the Rio Grande from Del Rio on Mexican soil, in the town of Villa Acuña, throughout the decade of the Great Depression. 

Doc Brinkley swooned about Del Rio over powerful radio waves that reached every corner of the U.S. and beyond. He rhapsodized about the local San Felipe Springs that sent water coursing through acequias in the town’s old quarter. “Just think of drinking that lovely spring water right out of the spring, just as God gives it to you.” An oasis on the edges of the Chihuahuan Desert, the “Queen City of the Rio Grande” was a wonderland in Doc’s day. Radio performers strolled the streets in a carnival atmosphere. There were psychics and seers in their mystic turbans and flowing robes, and hillbilly family bands like the Pickards and Carters. And when Cowboy Slim Rinehart and Jimmie Rodgers’ cousin Jesse Rogers (“Radio’s No. 1 Cowboy Songster”) sang about life in the American West, many a Prosser Martin customer tuned in to XER. Mexican songbirds and silver-tongued pitchmen added to the border party, as did Dr. Brinkley’s elderly patients, men far from home with a quickened step in their keisters and a renewed gleam in their aging eyes. 

“Del Ree-uh,” Doc cooed into the microphone, “is the Center of Romance in America.” 

Brinkley purchased his $750 traveling bag from Prosser Martin in 1939. That same year, the San Antonio Light reported on a visit by the saddlemaker. “Skill of the suave Del Rio cowboy as a leather worker has spread far and wide,” wrote the Alamo City scribe, “and many of the world’s celebrities are among his regular customers.” The story noted that bandleader Paul Whiteman (aka “the King of Jazz”) wore his $10,000 Martin-made cowboy outfit on daily rides through Central Park in New York. And the Parisian artist, anthropologist and writer Paul Coze “organized a rope spinning club in the French capital” with Prosser’s assistance. “Martin says the Frenchmen are most enthusiastic cowboy fans,” wrote the Light reporter, “and he furnishes them with thousands of dollars’ worth of material every year.” 

Also in 1939, the San Angelo paper, which spilled tons of ink on Prosser’s leather art and his “ro-day-o-ing,” reported that Ham Fisher, creator of the popular Joe Palooka comic strip, would soon visit Del Rio to see about “a real cowboy saddle.” The San Angelo Morning Times story further noted that the owner of New York’s popular 21 Club ordered up a $2,500 Martin special. “It cost that because of the large amount of 10 karat gold and sterling silver.” A likeness of the club’s famous gates was hand-tooled on each side of the saddle. 

The article also dished on the “pictorial ‘Who’s Who’” on Martin’s walls, where Mary Pickford and other movie stars and crooners rubbed picture frames with “humble, but hard-riding cowboys.” In one photo, Prosser played poker with bandleader Guy Lombardo, putting his wide-brim Stetson up against Guy’s violin. Paul Whiteman autographed another. The photo of NBC radio talent show host Major Bowes, inscribed “with kindest regards to the Big Boy,” recalls Prosser’s appearances on the show with a Mexican quartet that he directed. (The saddlemaker’s dabbling in show business went back to his military service during World War I, when he toured Texas with the Camp Travis Minstrels, whose performances benefitted the convalescent soldiers’ fund. “Lieut. Prosser Martin is in charge of this entertainment unit,” observed the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 1918. “He is an old minstrel man himself, having been the original ‘Prosser’ with the Al Fields’ Minstrels.” That last statement is puzzling and could not be verified. Perhaps the young lieutenant was pulling a reporter’s leg?) 

As the second world war raged overseas, a Corpus Christi newspaper described a saddle the Del Rioan made for former Texas Ranger, Col. Bill Sterling. “The work of art in leather,” the Caller-Times reported, had been displayed at the New York World’s Fair in 1939, at Chicago’s Soldier Field, Madison Square Garden and on the Plaza at Santa Fe, New Mexico. In Corpus Christi, it was exhibited in the window of a furniture store before appearing in a rodeo parade. “It is bordered with 50 yards of hilo de oro, or thread of gold,” the story continued. “In silver semi-circles on the saddle skirt are inlaid golden longhorn heads with ruby eyes. The saddle horn is encased in silver with a silver lone star on the flat top. On the fenders, the leather is stamped with a map of Texas enclosing a longhorn head and crossed six-shooters. On the solid silver back of the cantle is engraved ‘Gen. W. W. Sterling.’” 

The Santa Fe New Mexican added that the saddle had been gifted to Sterling by Will Rogers and Tom Mix. 

In 1955, the American Quarter Horse Association of Amarillo decided to present President Dwight Eisenhower and his grandson David with a pair of horses and custom saddles. Some 200 saddlemakers offered their services for the job, but the AQHA chose Prosser Martin. As The Texas Mohair Weekly and The Rocksprings Record reported, Prosser “designed the saddles and performed the artwork while Irvin Mayes, who has his saddle shop in Martin’s establishment, completed the construction.” 

Irvin Mayes headed for Del Rio in 1943, after working at Tex Tan, a leather products factory, in Yoakum, Texas, and at an Amarillo saddle shop. His brother Earl Mayes had opened Del Rio Leather Co. as early as 1941, and taught leathercraft classes at the local USO during the war. Irvin worked for Martin until 1950, when he went into business with Earl as Del Rio Saddle Shop, which apparently was housed – at least for a time – inside Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitters. Though Earl died in 1953, Irvin was still making saddles as late as 1989, when he lamented to a local reporter that business was slow. 

Still, Mayes used only the finest leather from Hermann Oak on his custom saddles. “Its special fragrance permeates the workshop,” purred the Del Rio reporter. 

When Prosser retired in 1961, and sold the business to an associate, its brand was so engrained in rodeo and ranching country—and, to some degree, in pop culture—that it remained “Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitter” through the 1960s after Prosser’s retirement and through the 1970s after his death. 

The division of labor as described in the making of the Eisenhower saddles was underscored in 1976, by the last champion of the Prosser Martin brand, John Stockton. Stockton, who is credited with conceptualizing and implementing the world’s “first stand-alone bull riding event,” told the Del Rio press that in its early days, Martin’s saddle shop relied on the talent and skill of “experienced leather craftsmen brought from Mexico’s interior.” 

That binational exchange so prevalent on the border is reflected in Prosser’s catalog copy of the 1930s. “As my readers all know,” he wrote in 1937, “the large ranches where chuck wagons are in operation the year-round, where heavy roping and riding is a daily event, have drifted more or less from the United States across the Rio Grande to Old Mexico. A day’s ride from Del Rio puts me on the ranges of American and Mexican cattle barons, who are today the world’s largest operators in the cattle industry. There we find cowboys who sleep with their saddles, and don’t see a town oftener than once a year….From these riders come the ideas for designing and making Martin equipment. In addition to this information and help, I also spend a great deal of time at the world’s leading rodeos, learning the wants of professional riders and ropers.” 

While his catalog texts, as seen in this excerpt, were rather straightforward, Prosser got creative with his ads in the local paper, occasionally exhibiting Will Rogers-y originality in his grammar and spelling. “Say Pardner,” begins the copy in a 1958 ad with a drawing of a cowpoke getting bucked off a bronc, “Since my forced landing in business in Del Rio, I have snorted and pitched here through war, droughts, robberies, bank failures, hot checks and hot days, for thirty-five years fitting quality western wear and leather goods for Pa, Ma, and the little ones. Have been held up, beat up, kicked around, robbed and shot at. I am still outfitting the top cowboys and cowgirls of the land, as well as [serving] as a western outfitter to Presidents of the United States and Mexico.” 

“A real waspy actin’ mamma of a frisky young cowboy had the Wagon Boss all worried the other day,” begins a 1956 advertisement. “This mamma breezes into Cowboy Headquarters here in town where the Post Office is across from, and she had a look out her eyes as if she had been prodded on the end of her snoot with an electric prod pole.” The upshot of the yarn was that the young mother had bought a pair of Acme crepe sole boots from PMCO for her “little squirt” and she was “running a big bluff” about being angry. She was actually overjoyed by the fact that her youngster’s stomping through the house had suddenly become a silent stampede due to the crepe soles. “Turned out she was so happy for such a noiseless pair of boots, she gave the Wagon Boss a big hug knowing all the time he was a family man.” 

Continuing, the ad text encouraged Del Rio gals to come shopping at Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitter in their birthday suits. “If you were wantin’ a horse to ride, you wouldn’t go to an undertaker lookin’ for a horse, may need an undertaker after the ride, but it just don’t make sense. If you want to save cents, use good sense by coming to Prosser Martin’s Western Store, which keeps pens full of BOOTS, HATS, WESTERN SNAP SHIRTS, FRINGED LEATHER JACKETS, SQUAW BOOTS, MOCCASINS, BELTS, TOOLED BILL FOLDS, OH heck, come on to Cowboy Headquarters if you don’t have any better sense, bring some cents with you, we will tell you every TALL TALE in Texas about our great values which you will see at a glance. All top quality Western Wear for you to fulfill your Western Wishes. If we don’t treat you right, give us a good cussin’, if you don’t buy anything we will give you the same deal. Have heard so many women say, I just hate to come to town as I have to dress. Don’t let this stop you, come on down bare back, fact of the matter we Waddies here at Headquarters get a bang out of this, and think of the time you will save, won’t have to put on to take off, and with bare facts to start from it’s much easier to get your right size. PROSSER MARTIN. COWBOY OUTFITTER. DEL RIO, TEXAS. The Post Office is across from Us.” 

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Prosser Martin Cowboy Outfitter catalogs, both in original vintage printings and in reprints are “collectible cowboy ephemera” and show up in online sales. Though one catalog was recently advertised for $250, I found an original 1930s catalog several years ago for about 20 bucks on eBay. Some of the catalogs are preserved in the archives of the Whitehead Museum in Del Rio and the Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles. His saddles and other leather goods are also sought by collectors. Martin Wardlaw says that Prosser Martin saddles his wife Elaine and their kids bought for around $85 and gave him for Christmas, which he keeps in the living room of his Del Rio rancho, are today worth thousands.