Reno tailor Jacob Davis created riveted denim jeans in 1871 in a Reno shop.
Two years later, he and Levi Strauss & Co. patented the pants with the rivets to the corners and pockets that made them the sturdy favorites of miners, loggers and cowboys who helped tame the West.
After receiving the patent, the first manufacturing facility was built to product "waist overalls" - the original jeans. By the 1920s, Levi's denim waist overalls had become the best-selling men's work pant in the United States. And it would grow more. It was estimated that in 2014, approximately 450 million pairs of jeans were bought.
Nevada tourism officials are planning a three-day festival in Reno next fall to celebrate and promote the city as the birthplace of what became modern blue jeans.
The "Blue Jeans Jam" next Oct. 2-4 will celebrate the iconic trousers' impact on popular culture with concerts, fashion shows, a retail marketplace and a mini-festival of films that were milestones in the history of blue jeans, such as James Dean's "Rebel Without a Cause," officials announced on Wednesday.It also will include scholarly presentations on the "Jeaneology" of the pants.
Interest in Davis' role in the birth of the jeans grew in 2001 when the San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co. purchased what it said then was the oldest known jeans in the world - a pair dating to an 1880s mining town in Nevada that sold at auction for $46,532.
Best Regards, Kelly
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