The Ten-Gallon Hat Myth

The iconic "ten-gallon hat" doesn't hold ten gallons of anything. In fact, even the largest sombrero barely holds four. The name traces back to Mexican vaqueros, who wore wide-brimmed hats decorated with as many as ten braided hatbands. In Spanish, the word for "braid" is "galón," but English speakers mistook it for "gallon" and assumed it referred to liquid capacity. Thanks to that slip, one of the Old West's most enduring symbols is based on a mistranslation rather than a measurement.

Previous Fact Next Fact