No machine could replace the thousands of hours of experience and know-how contained in the more than 100 hands that touch a Danner boot through the course of production. It’s rare to see a factory operate nearly unchanged since 1936, the same manual tools and processes  for decades, but that’s just what makes Danner Boots among the most durable on the market. A visit to their industrial workshop in Portland, Ore. reveals an assembly line of craftspeople each working with the attention of an artisan and the efficiency of a machine.

In the brightly-lit industrial whir, slabs of leather are stacked and spread out (40 percent they’ll reject) to be hand graded and tested for strength, durability and flexibility. The leather is stretched and cut from the strongest parts before the individual pieces are fed through a sewing machine by hand. Every stitch and slab has been through a series of tests even before the Gore-Tex lining or Vibram outsoles are added.

The factory also contains a prototype unit for manufacturing and testing new models as well as a rebuild section specifically for the fixing-up of over-worn boots, fulfilling the company’s promise of a lifetime guarantee on every pair. Rumor has it, it takes 15 years of hiking in the Green Mountains to wear down a Danner. The company did, after all, begin as a shoe manufacturer for lumberjacks during some of the toughest years of the Great Depression.

It goes back to the vision of Charles Danner, who, with the help of his uncle and two brothers, started making logger boots at a time when an average boot cost less than five dollars a pair, the notion of mass-producing shoes by factories overseas almost unheard of in the market. By 1957, the company had built a name for themselves as the makers of the logger-style Shipyard Boot, developing and patenting the first truly waterproof boot by 1979. Today, Danner’s popular Stumptown collection offers the same comfort, support and durability as the heavy-duty Shipyard in a selection of 25 wearable models for walking, hiking and mountaineering, including one pair in blue suede.