Figure 1.--

American Scouts have had regulation shoes and boots. I don't lmow if this was the case in other countries. I know relatively little about the regulation Scout shoes. We do not know when the BSA first adopted official Scout fooitwear. We do note advertisements from the Excelsior Shoe Company in a 1926 issue of The Youth's Compoanion for Boy Scout shoes. There were both low-cut oxford anf hightop shoes. I think there may have even been regulation Cub shoes, but am not sure. The Scout shoes were brown and the Cub shoes black. I thought they were available in the 1950s-70s, but again this needs confirmation. I don't think they were very popular, primarily because of the cost. Most boys preferred to wear their own non-regulation shoes. I don't recall Cubs and Scouts wearing sneakers to anny great extent in the 1950s, but this changed dramatically in the 1960s.

A HBC contributor reports that she went metal detecting and ran across a copper coin, half dollar size, that said it was the "offial shoe of the boy scouts". It is dated July 1910, and says it is by Excelsior Shoe Company, Portsmouth, Ohio. Here is what i know about it. In Feb 1910 the boy scouts were founded in Portsmouth Ohio. This town is known for it's shoe manufacturing, however, this town was once part of Virginia. The first boy scout handbook which was in 1910, allowed advertisers to be in the book. One of the advertisers was Excelsior shoes, thus the "official shoe". The "coin" has a hole in the top as if to be a metal. Excelsior shoes is no longer in business.