Yoakum’s Economy Rides on Leather,” hollered a headline in 1969. At the time, the article in a nearby town’s newspaper, informing some 925 people in a town with a population of 5,850, worked for Yoakum’s eight leather companies. Having once served as a staging ground for the fabled Chisholm Trail, the burg at times not only boasted of being the “Leather Capital of the Southwest,” but expanded the brag, Texas-style, to lay claim to the title of “Leather Capital of the World.”
The big eight included such companies as Texas Leather, Cow Country Industries and Circle Y Saddles. But the big daddies of ‘em
