Heritage Plaza Park Penny Bear and Cubs

Tahoe City, California, United States

Public art

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Listed, not yet checked · Oct 2026

This Big Thing is recorded as still being here.

Penny Bear, formally Ursa Mater, is a 12-foot grizzly sculpture with two cubs by Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson, covered in about 200,000 pennies. It came to Heritage Plaza, Tahoe City, as a temporary exhibit, and Placer County agreed in 2019 to buy it. A May 2024 Tahoe Fund release called it the iconic Penny Bear statue in Heritage Plaza.

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Heritage Plaza Park Penny Bear and Cubs

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Site-level location · 39.1699° N, 120.1401° W

FIELD GUIDE

The story

A 12-foot grizzly in Tahoe City wears a coat of about 200,000 pennies.

Ursa Mater, known to almost everyone as Penny Bear, shows a 12-foot mother grizzly with two cubs of 6 and 5 feet. It was installed in Heritage Plaza in Tahoe City, in North Lake Tahoe. The artists, the husband-and-wife team Robert and Lisa Ferguson, work as Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson. They premiered it at Burning Man in 2017, a year after a first penny bear, Ursa Major, which is now part of the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery collection, according to CBS Sacramento.

The idea came from Lisa Ferguson's fascination with pennies, which Canada was taking out of circulation. She suggested that coins turned on their sides would read as fur. The bear is built of steel and foam, with the coins fixed on with an adhesive stucco. Robert Ferguson told KQED in 2018 that it had survived the desert. KQED gave the weight as 5,700 pounds and the count as 205,000 pennies; CBS Sacramento says 200,000 American and Canadian pennies.

After a spell in downtown San Jose, it arrived in Heritage Plaza in 2018 as a temporary exhibit, due to end on 31 July 2019. In June 2019 CBS Sacramento reported that the Placer County Board of Supervisors had agreed to pay $40,000 for it, with Tahoe Public Art adding $61,000, so that it could stay permanently.

A May 2024 Tahoe Fund release called it the iconic Penny Bear statue in Heritage Plaza, when 25 donor-engraved bears were hung on the plaza's railings.

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WHAT TO EXPECT

A penny-covered bear family installed in Heritage Plaza, a public plaza in Tahoe City. In May 2024 the Tahoe Fund reported 25 engraved donor bears hanging from the plaza's railings.

ACCESS

Heritage Plaza is in Tahoe City, California, in North Lake Tahoe. Placer County agreed in 2019 to buy the sculpture to keep it permanently.

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