Wesco

Wesco, the trade name of the West Coast Shoe Company, has made boots in Oregon since 1918. John Henry Shoemaker started it in Portland after about ten years in other shops there, and moved it to Scappoose, a small town on the Columbia River northwest of the city, when the Depression closed his downtown stores. The factory is still there, at 52828 NW Shoe Factory Lane, with a showroom and fitting room open on weekdays.

The work is the whole boot, not final assembly. Wesco’s About page says the boots are built “in our own factory, in our own backyard” in a 155-step process, and its sales manager told Stitchdown in 2019 that “we’re not outsourcing any production, it’s all done here in Scappoose.” About twenty people build boots and around thirty-odd work there in all. Custom orders run to roughly nine months, which is what you’d expect from a company that size building to measure.

The product is heavy work boots. The Jobmaster lace-up, the Boss engineer boot, the Highliner climbing boot for linemen and arborists, and the Timber caulked logger are the core, with a rebuild service for all of them.

Why the second mark rather than the first: Wesco says where its soles come from (Vibram’s plant in North Brookfield, Massachusetts) but not where its leather is tanned. Leather is most of a boot, and this site does not give the top mark when the main material is unaccounted for. Nothing we read suggests the leather is imported. Wesco just doesn’t say either way, and the mark will move up once it does.