Rockmount Ranch Wear says its founder, Jack A. Weil, known as Papa Jack, made the first Western shirts with snaps. Weil founded the company in 1946, and it still operates out of a 1909 building on Wazee Street in Lower Downtown Denver. He was born in 1901, learned manufacturing in an apparel factory while he was in high school during World War I, and, by the company’s account, worked daily until age 107. Rockmount explains the case for snaps in rodeo terms: if a bull’s horn catches a rider’s shirt, snaps come undone instead of the fabric tearing, or worse.
The company counts four generations of the Weil family. Jack B. Weil joined in 1954 and headed design and merchandising for fifty years. Steve Weil, the third generation and the company’s president, joined in 1981, and Colter Weil, the fourth generation, joined in 2026.
What they do
Rockmount was started to make a new brand of Western shirts, and it describes its signature design, with a sawtooth pocket and diamond snaps, as the longest continuously made shirt in the USA. The company says museums including the Smithsonian, the National Cowboy Museum and the Autry Museum of the American West have Rockmount in their collections. Its list of people who have worn its shirts includes Elvis, Bob Dylan and Robert Redford, and it says the shirts Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal wore in ‘Brokeback Mountain’ later sold at auction for $101,000. The flagship store on Wazee Street features a museum of vintage Rockmount and memorabilia.
Good to know
- 1626 Wazee St., Denver; 800-776-2566.
- Retail store hours listed on the company’s contact page: Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
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