Enid Justin was born in 1894 in Nocona, Texas — five years after her father H.J. Justin had moved his boot operation there from Spanish Fort. She died on October 14, 1990, at age 96. In between, she founded the Nocona Boot Company, ran it for 56 years, watched her brothers reunite the family business by acquiring it in 1981, and became the most celebrated entrepreneur Montague County has produced. She is memorialized today by an animatronic figure at Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum in Bowie that tells her story in her own recorded voice.
Who Was Enid Justin?
Enid Justin grew up in the boot business. Her father H.J. Justin had been making custom boots in Nocona since 1889; by the time Enid was old enough to work — some accounts say as young as 12 — she was part of the operation. She learned every aspect of the trade: the cutting, the stitching, the fitting, the grading of leather, the management of a shop floor. When H.J. Justin died on July 14, 1918, Enid was 24 years old and had been working in the business for most of her childhood.
Her brothers John Sr. and Earl took formal control of the company. Enid continued working.
What Happened in 1925?
In 1925, John Sr. and Earl decided to move the Justin Boot Company to Fort Worth. Their reasoning was practical: Fort Worth had a larger labor pool, better infrastructure, and more market access. The boot business had grown beyond what Nocona could easily support.
Enid opposed the move. She believed the company should remain in the town her father had chosen, where the craft traditions were rooted, where the workers knew the trade. Her brothers moved anyway.
Enid stayed.
On September 1, 1925 — at age 30, with $5,000 borrowed from a local bank — she founded the Nocona Boot Company, establishing a direct competitor to her brothers’ operation in the same town her brothers had just left. Her co-partner in the original formation was Julius L. Steltzer, alongside Jess B. Thompson.
What she did in 1925 was unusual in ways that are difficult to fully appreciate today. Women did not found manufacturing companies in 1925. The boot industry was entirely male at the ownership level. The fact that she had grown up in the trade, knew the craft cold, and had relationships with workers and suppliers gave her a foundation — but the act of staying and competing required a particular kind of conviction.
How Did She Build Nocona Boot Company?
Enid Justin ran Nocona Boot Company for the next 56 years. The arc of that run passed through the Great Depression, World War II, the postwar Western-wear boom, and the long consolidation of the American boot industry.
She became president in 1934 and expanded sales outside Texas in 1935 — the first move toward the national brand Nocona Boots would become. Through the Depression years, she kept the company solvent and the workers employed in a town where she was the principal industrial employer.
Nocona Boots developed a quality reputation distinct from Justin Boots — different designs, different positioning, a brand identity built on her own standards rather than her father’s. Celebrity customers across the Western entertainment world ordered Nocona boots. The company became a major employer in Nocona and one of the defining economic institutions of Montague County.
She ran it as “Miss Enid” — the honorific her employees and customers used throughout her tenure. Her management style was hands-on and demanding. She knew every part of the operation.
The specific production and sales figures from the 1925–1981 period require primary-archival research; those numbers are in Justin Brands archives and are not fully available in the sources consulted here.
What Was the 1981 Reunion?
In 1981, Justin Industries — the successor to her brothers’ company — acquired the Nocona Boot Company. Enid Justin was 87 years old.
The acquisition reunited the family business 56 years after the 1925 split. Whatever the personal and business dynamics between Enid and her brothers had been across those decades, the outcome was a reunification: the company her father had founded in Spanish Fort in 1879 and the company she had founded in Nocona in 1925 were under common ownership again.
The Nocona Boot Company brand continued under Justin ownership, with production in Nocona continuing initially before later consolidation into broader Justin Brands operations.
See also: Nocona
How Is Enid Justin Remembered?
Enid Justin died on October 14, 1990, at age 96 — having lived through the entire arc of American Western boot manufacturing, from her father’s $35 shop loan in Spanish Fort to the global Justin Brands enterprise.
The most distinctive memorial to her is the animatronic figure at Tales ‘N’ Trails Museum in Bowie, which tells the Nocona Boots story in her own recorded voice. It is one of the museum’s most distinctive exhibits and one of the more unusual memorializations of a Texas businessperson.
Academic treatment of her career exists: Carol A. Lipscomb’s The Lady Makes Boots: Enid Justin and the Nocona Boot Company (Texas Tech University Press, 2021) is the book-length treatment. The Humanities Texas “Texas Originals” program included her. The UNT Digital Library holds the Enid Justin–Nocona Boot Company Collection. The TSHA Handbook of Texas “Nocona Boot Company” entry is the standard reference.
Her significance in Montague County’s history rests on a single decision made in 1925: when her brothers left, she stayed. Everything that followed — the 56 years of the company, the employment, the brand identity, the 1981 reunion — flows from that decision.
Sources: TSHA Handbook of Texas — “Nocona Boot Company” and “Herman Joseph Justin” entries; Humanities Texas “Enid Justin” profile and “Born into Boots” interview; Carol A. Lipscomb, The Lady Makes Boots (Texas Tech University Press, 2021). Birthplace corrected from “Spanish Fort” to Nocona per TSHA — H.J. Justin moved family to Nocona in 1889, five years before Enid’s 1894 birth. Husband’s name spelling corrected to “Julius L. Steltzer” per TSHA.
See also: H.J. Justin | Nocona | People of Montague County