The Boyds Collection, Ltd.


Boyds Bear Country…the biggest undertakin’ in Boyds history! We wanna keep you up-to-date and informed every step of the way…’cause we’re building this store and museum just for you! In this special section, we’ll post images of the construction site (so you can see the progress we make every week and every day!), post articles about the excitin’ stuff we have planned at Boyds Bear Country, and give you all the juicy details as they become available.
Click on one of the dates below to see how our Big Ol' Bank Barn has progressed! August 22, 2002 - Finishin' Touches! July 12, 2002 - Come On Down To The Country! June 13, 2002 - Here Comes The Silo! May 6, 2002 - Classic Auto Placed On 2nd Floor! April 16, 2002 - A Barn is Born! March 6, 2002 - Puttin' On The Roof! February 26, 2002 - Startin' Ta Take Shape! February 8, 2002 - Buildin' One Floor At A Time! January 28, 2002 - Construction Starts! January 21, 2002 - Not Just An Ordinary Piece of Land!
August 22, 2002 - We’re finally puttin’ the finishing touches on Boyds Bear Country™! In just a few short weeks, we’ll be open for business and can’t wait to meet ya! So what have we been up to? Paintin’ murals, settin’ up displays, bakin’ up a storm in the kitchen, and fillin’ in the space for the museum with old photos and rare pieces of Boyds history!
Renowned muralist Wayne Fetrow is busy at work, paintin’ the side of our big ol’ barn with a larger-than-life-size mural, designed by in-house arteeest, Amy Routson (she’s the creator of our Winston’s World™ greeting card line!).
The interior of Boyds Bear Country™ is now filled with whimsical displays, enchanting scenes, and tons of Boyds Stuff just waitin’ to go home with a new family!
Down in the family-style eatery, we’re fillin' shelves with country-style food products and sprucin’ up our food stations…can’t wait to serve you a whoppin’ plate-full of our home-cooked fare!
Our Atrium is a sight to behold. We’ve got hardwood balconies on each floor of Boyds Bear Country™--you can always find a spot to stop, rest, and people-watch the crowd below!
July 12, 2002 - Our lil’ building project in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is almost complete. All we gotta do is paint a fantastic mural on our barn silo (design created by Boyds’ in-house arteest Amy Routson and painted by famous local artist Wayne Fettro), finalize the fixtures and displays inside, and put that final coat of red paint on the outside. We can’t wait to meet you at Boyds Bear Country™ in September…only a few short weeks away!
We’ve finally assembled the silo, which will feature artwork designed by Boyds’ in-house arteeest, Amy Routson, and painted by local muralist Wayne Fettro.
The stone fireplace in the eatery will keep folks nice and cozy on cold winter’s days!
The barn rafters are secured…all we gotta do now is fill in the space with fixtures and Boyds-style displays!
All roads lead to Boyds Bear Country... we even put up signs in case you get lost!
June 13, 2002 - The big red barn is finally lookin' like an honest-to-goodness farmstead! We've been workin' real hard on our silo...for what Adams County barn would be without one! The paintin' job is nearly done...boy, that took a ton of paint! We'll keep you posted as we get a lil' farther down the road in our progress!
The outer shell of our barn is complete...now we just have to do a lil' fine-tunin' and work on the stuff inside!
What wonders a lil' red paint can do! Lookin' like an honest-to-goodness Adams County Barn.
Construction of the corn silo is under way...just gotta pop a top on that baby!
May 6, 2002 - The Folks at Boyds purchased a classic automobile to use in a Boyds Bear Country™ display, but couldn’t figure out how to get it on the second floor of our big ol’ red barn. Do we rig a pulley and lug it up? Build a huge ramp to the second floor and drive it up? We finally found a construction vehicle that could lift it in one fell swoop. What a cinch! Can wait to fill that beauty with Boyds Bears and Friends!
After weeks of ponderin’, we finally found a construction vehicle that could lift our classic auto to the second floor of Boyds Bear Country™.
What a beaut! Couldn’t you just imagine a young fella drivin’ his gal down a long country lane in this roadster!?
Allyoop! Up she goes to the second floor! We had to place the car inside Boyds Bear Country™ before we sealed the wall!
April 16, 2002 - Boyds Bear Country actually looks like a barn--we’ve made amazing progress in the last few weeks. Our able photographer Mike Mihalo trekked out to the site to take these amazin’ photos-can’t believe what a little wood glue and trim can do!
Workers were placing plywood on the steel skeleton-finally startin’ to look like a barn!
A cupola awaits placement...all it needs is a weathervane to be complete!
Today we use cranes and other modern equipment to build structures this massive...can you imagine that, back in the day, farmers used their bear hands? Talk about back-breakin’ work!
A great shot of our stone fireplace!

March 6, 2002 - Now that we’ve got the scaffolding up and the framework is pretty set in stone (oops, cement), construction workers have been able to work on the guts of Boyds Bear Country—ya know, all the rooms, hallways, nooks, and crannies inside. It won’t be long before the Folks at Boyds can actually tour the inside (sometime in June or July!), and we’ve begun construction of displays at one of our warehouses in anticipation of opening day. Wait till you see what we’ve got in store—phenomenal! Our road crew is refinishing old antique furniture and we even bought a beat-up old truck and a boat (previous owner says it was used in a big time Hollywood movie!) to use in our displays. Can’t wait to show it all off in October when we offishully open!
A view of the front of Boyds Bear Country
As you can see, construction workers have started work on the guts of this place—the individual rooms, hallways, nooks, and crannies.
Ahh, what a pretty picture! Can’t ya wait till we’re all finished and you can walk through the doors!
February 26, 2002 - In just a few short weeks, we've made tremendous progress in construction of Boyds Bear Country. Just before sunset on February 26, we snuck out to the site to snap a few more shots...can you believe how far we've come!? Pretty soon, we'll be slappin' a roof on this baby and callin' it done! Stay tuned for more updates!
A close-up of the front façade. Awe-inspirin’, ain’t it?!
In this shot, you can see the outline of the front façade and the makins of a chimney in the background.
February 8, 2002 - Even during these winter months, when snow, rain, and sleet make livin’ kinda icky, the construction crew continues work at the Boyds Bear Country site. Each week, our able Boyds photographer makes the trek over to the property to snap a few shots, so you can watch all the action as it unfolds. Can you imagine that in just a few short months, this big ol’ pile of tinker toys will be transformed into a humungous bank barn?! Keep checkin’ back to see our progress!
The fireplace is takin’ shape…hope we don’t run outta bricks!
The support beams are in place…now all we gotta do is put up some walls, floorboards, a roof maybe…a lotta work still left to do!
A crane was hauled in for the heavy liftin’…hope The Head Bean knows how to operate that thing! Heads Up!
The snow-covered landscape softens the harshness of the steal beams…just imagine yerself inside this place in a year!

January 28, 2002 - Now that we’ve started construction of Boyds Bear Country, we thought we’d give you a lil’ more detail about what you’ll find inside this big ol’ bank barn-it’s sure to be unlike anything you’ve evah seen before in yer life!
A foundation and support beams, at last! Gosh, hope we mixed that cement right!
Boyds Bear Country will feature a museum of Boyds history (and it's free!). But the museum will be only a small part of the overall facility. Each floor of the building will feature shopping areas, where folks can buy all kinds of Boyds Stuff. Boyds Bear Country will serve as Boyds’ flagship store, and offer elaborate displays and scenes featuring all of our newest releases, as well as Boyds classics!
A crane was used to lift heavy building materials (we rented it after someone stained their back liftin’ a ten-ton block…just kiddin’!).
Why’d we consider such a huge undertaking? ’Cause we wanted a special place where we could introduce collectors from all across the country to the world of Boyds…and place that makes you feel like you’ve entered a magical land where bears and hares frolic and play. Sooo the smart fellas at Boyds (yes, there are just a handful of us!) got to thinkin’….we've got a lot of farm land in these parts…let’s build one humdinger of a store and showcase Boyds Bears in a way that they’ve never been seen before! And that’s just what we’re gonna do!
Ah, the fireplace! Just imagine all the fun you’ll have, after a day of shoppin’, kickin’ back by the cozy fire and chattin’ with friends.
Mind you, this project has been back-breakin’(The Head Bean and the Folks at Boyds were out in the fields liftin' boulders with our own bear hands!), mind-numbin’, and time-consumin’ (not to mention wallet-crunchin’), so we’re only doin’ this once. We have no plans to build these country coliseums on every street corner (cuz we love our Dealers too much and want more than anything for folks to go to their Boyds Dealers for all their shopping needs…and visit Boyds Bear Country for a one-of-a-kind--not to mention wonderful--teddy bear experience!).
And then there were walls…can’t believe we’ve come this far in such a short span of time. By the way, ya don’t have a cement mixer or bulldozer we could borrow?
In deference to our Boyds Dealers, we will not offer 1Es and 2Es, and our Boyds Bear Country exclusives and other products will be sold only on-site--the only way you can purchase our store exclusives and other Boyds Stuff is by stoppin’ by! We look forward to meeting you at Boyds Bear Country and encourage you to make a day of it with friends and family!

What event is believed to have inspired the teddy bear?

Teddy Roosevelt’s hunting trip to Mississippi in November of 1902. Teddy and his entourage didn’t see hide nor hair of a bear, so a few folks rustled up a bear cub, tied it to a tree, and offered it to Teddy for target practice. Bein’ a tenderhearted fella, Teddy refused. A political cartoonist, Clifford Berryman, celebrated the event in “Drawing the Line in Mississippi,” a cartoon that appeared in The Washington Post. Folks fell in love with the little bear character, and soon after a stuffed toy version of the bear appeared on the market.

	Shop Online · Bears, Friends and More F.o.B Club · Newz · Boyds 101 · FAQ Search For Stuff · Find a store · Home Unsubscribe © 2009 Boyds® by Enesco®, 300 Frederick Street, Suite 9, Hanover, PA 17331