LS&Co. Unzipped

Welcome to our blog. Here’s where you’ll find a “behind-the-seams” look at what’s going on with Levi Strauss & Co. You’ll hear from a variety of voices, from both inside and outside the company. And you have the chance to share your thoughts. So read on — and weigh in!

Mar 01 2013

Tracking Down an Early Consumer

I traveled to the town of Wickenburg, Ariz., ten years ago for the first time. I went because I was obsessed with a pair of vintage jeans we have in the company Archives.

The pair is now on display in the atrium of our San Francisco Headquarters -- part of an exhibit on the 140th anniversary of the 501® jeans. The jeans belonged to a hard-working miner named Homer Campbell.

Homer had purchased his 501® jeans in that mining and ranching town in 1917, covered them with layer upon layer of denim padding, and wore them every day except Sunday for 3 years. He then returned them to the company in 1920, saying that the pants had just not held up, and he should know: he had worn Levi’s® jeans for decades.

Although no evidence survives, I’m sure that we sent him a replacement pair.

Homer’s jeans were placed in a frame and displayed at the company headquarters for years, and were then on view at our San Francisco factory starting in the 1980s.

The Archives staff removed the jeans from the frame in 2002, so that designers could make a limited edition replica for the company’s 150th anniversary in 2003.

Once they were out of the frame, Conservator Stacia Fink took a good look at the jeans and made an interesting discovery: The pants were in fine shape, it was Homer’s padding that had fallen apart.

Released in 2003 and called “The Celebration Jean,” the replica of Homer’s pants was a big hit with the denim cognoscenti.

I decided to do a little research on Homer during that anniversary year. All we had was his pants and his letter. After a little digging, I discovered that he was buried in an old, historic cemetery called Walnut Grove, about 50 miles northeast of Wickenburg.

So, on a blistering114-degree July day (that’s 45 degrees Celsius) I hit the (very bumpy) road in a 4-wheel-drive SUV and found him -- high on a mesa in the mountains. His simple marble grave marker was as clear as the day it was placed on his grave in 1944.

 

I had his pants with me, put them on the ground, and took a photo. I then nearly passed out from heat stroke. (That's what happens when a native Californian visits Arizona in the summer.)

Earlier this month, I returned to Wickenburg to visit Homer again.

Joe Stevens, a friend and local desert tour guide, took me up there in his Jeep, which we really needed. My rental car would never have made it on the road, which was just as rock-filled and bumpy as it had been ten years earlier.

I was pleased to see that the grave and the cemetery were still in great shape, and now I know the reason: Mike and Ella McCracken, the owners of the Gold Bar Ranch, down the hill from Walnut Grove, have taken care of the old graveyard for years.

I met Ella on this trip, and she told me she holds a clean-up day every year. She also did some genealogical research about Homer that she shared with me. And she was thrilled to hear about the cemetery’s connection to Levi Strauss & Co. history.

Posted By: Lynn Downey, Historian, Levi Strauss & Co.

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Tags: Denim,Levi Strauss & Co.,Levi's®

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L. David Kingsley (not verified) - Mar 04 2013
Great story, Lynn! Levi's is indeed a part of so much of our history, much of it unpublished, and all of it unique!

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