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Author: Admin | 2025-04-27
Blue jeans gained popularity in the late 19th-century American West due to their durability. Illustration by Meilan Solly / Photos via Fotosearch / Getty Images and Levi Strauss & Co. Archives When Nevada-based tailor Jacob Davis received an order for a hardy pair of work pants in December 1870, he decided to experiment with a new design, reinforcing the seams and pockets of canvas trousers with copper rivets. A Latvian-born immigrant living in Reno, Davis soon partnered with Levi Strauss, the dry goods merchant who’d provided the canvas cloth, to launch his product on a large scale. The pair filed a patent in May 1873, with Davis noting that his method “avoid[ed] a large amount of trouble in mending portions of seams which are subjected to constant strain.”Now known as blue jeans, the modern descendants of Davis’ invention evoke the gritty era of standing in a river to pan for gold or entering a mineshaft to pick away at rock. But while denim is ubiquitous today, surviving examples of 19th-century jeans are few and far between. In 2018, an 1893 pair of Levi’s set the record for the world’s most expensive pair of jeans, selling at auction for nearly $100,000; earlier this month, a pair of 1880s Levi’s discovered in an abandoned mineshaft fetched $87,400 (including buyer’s premium). A pair of Levi’s 201s from the 1890s Levi Strauss & Co. Archives The relative rarity of historic denim makes a discovery by YouTuber Frank Schlichting even more significant. Early in 2020, Schlichting found seven pairs of 1800s jeans in an abandoned mineshaft in Yuma, Arizona. The cache included two pairs each from Levi Strauss & Co., Stronghold and Pacific Coast, and one pair from Triumph. (The latter two brands are now defunct.)Allen Armstrong, CEO and founder of the Castle Dome museum, mine and ghost town where Schlichting made his find, had previously explored the same shaft but missed the trove of jeans, coming within 20 feet of it. He did, however, find a pair of Levi’s 201s—a lower-priced version of the classic 501s, created around 1890 with cheaper buttons and a
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