South Dakota Woman Collects 10,000 Teddy Bears

HILL CITY, SD — Jackie Miley did not have an easy childhood.

Growing up in foster care in St. Paul, Minnesota, Miley didn’t have much. Not even a teddy bear.

But now, decades later, she is the owner of a teddy bear. More than 10,000 of them, actually.

Miley, the curator of Teddy Bear Town in Hill City, South Dakota, has more teddy bears than anyone else in the world. Each has a spot inside a modest home on a Main Street drag of a town that’s home to less than 800 people.

“I never had a bear as a child,” said Miley. “After hearing people's stories about how their bear was comforting, I always wished for one to cling to.”

She recalls the first time she ever laid eyes on a teddy bear, one day at the Minnesota State Fair when she was 8 years old.

“I remember I had one nickel left, and you could buy a lot of candy for a nickel back then,” she remembered, thinking instead she’d try her luck at a game that would result in her very first teddy as a prize.

“Well, I threw my nickel and hit the plate, but my nickel fell off and I didn’t win,” she said. “I knew I should have picked the candy.”

Miley moved to Hill City in 2002 to take a job as a live-in desk clerk at the Super 8 motel at the center of town. At that time she did have a bear. It was a “Build-a-Bear” she built at the Ripley’s Museum in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, when visiting her son.

Fast-forward 14 years, and that one bear has paved the way for a Guinness World Record, one she’s had re-certified five times.

“What little time I could get away from the motel, I'd go to Rapid City and the different thrift stores,” she said. “I'd see a bear that was cute, different and get it.”

The bears kept accumulating so much that they would fill up much of the space at her motel room home and line the walls up to the third floor. The collection grew so much that Miley made it a goal to have more teddies in her home than Hill City had residents, which at the time was 780.

When that number was met and media outlets in Southwest South Dakota caught on, people began bringing her more bears.

And more. And more. And more.

In 2005, Miley set the Guinness Record by having a collection of 3,610 teddy bears. She had so many the owner of the Super 8 bought the house across the street so she would have more room. That house is now Teddy Bear Town, something that’s become a bit of an off-the-beaten-path tourist attraction for travelers in the area to see Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse and the Badlands National Park.

“Some people come in and tell me they’ve been looking forward to this more than Mount Rushmore,” Miley told a group of tourists from Chicago earlier this month, pointing to a sign that indicated there were 9,997 Teddy bears on display, just three away from a magical milestone.

In Teddy Bear Town, you’ll find just about every kind of bear imaginable. But no two are identical. There are ones taller than most people, and ones so small you can hardly see. Bears have come in from every U.S. state and 28 countries. Several don team logos from Major League Baseball ballparks across the nation, and others have strong personal stories of their own.

“I call it a house of memories,” Miley says. “People come and remember their childhood bears, and tell their different stories. I've got people’s first bears, some in memory of someone who has passed away and some specially made.”

For every bear that is donated, Miley provides a certificate with the person’s name, what number bear they donated and a note stating their bear is part of a world record.

“That’s why kids love sending them,” she said.

Miley reached the 10,000 milestone on Sunday, July 24. Jordan Dahl, a chainsaw artist with a studio on the same block as Teddy Bear Town, carved her a replica of the first bear she brought to Hill City nearly 14 years ago to the date.

She has since upped the number to 10,090, but she wants the updated record to read an even 10,000.

After all, it’s not like anyone is going to catch her.