In the 1960s Scott Legried’s dad was farming as well as selling livestock equipment and snowmobiles. He was on the road and would occasionally be given a hat by those with whom he did business.
“He went into the closet to get something one day and there were a bunch of hats on a shelf of different colors. He said, ‘that’s kind of pretty — it would be fun to collect some of them,’” says Scott Legried of Frost, Minn.
Scott’s father began collecting, sorting and boxing hats. Many of the hats had ties to their livelihood — working together as father and son on their family farm, which dates back to 1875.
Scott’s dad had a couple of rules when collecting hats. They had to have a patch on them or an advertisement, they couldn’t be plain, and they couldn’t have any dirty sayings, Legried says.
Over time the collection grew and his father set personal goals for the number and types of hats he wanted to collect. One of those achievements was tied to John Deere dealerships.
“He wanted to get a John Deere hat that said the state and the name of the dealership, implement dealer from every state, so all 50 states,” Legried says.
Once he had all 50 states he set out to get one from each Canadian province as well. Scott’s father passed in 2011, which means Scott oversees the thousands of hats today.
“This is still the world’s largest hat collection. We’re now at over 109,000. I would guess 115,000, if I had to take a guess,” Legried says.
Another unique feature about the hat collection is they did not collect duplicate hats, so each hat is unique. Scott has some hats displayed in his home, along the walls and on shelves in the garage.
There’s three semi loads of hats that have been boxed, documented and categorized – they did that when Guinness World Records certified the collection several years ago. Scott’s father loved collecting hats, yet he says there is something a bit ironic about the collection.
“He wasn’t a big hat wearer,” Legried says. “He wore a hat for a couple of weeks in the spring for planting and then a couple of weeks in the fall when we harvested to keep the sun out of his eyes, and that was it. Mostly in the winter he wore a stocking cap, and other than that, he didn’t wear one. That’s kind of funny.”
Scott, on the other hand, does wear hats, but he doesn’t pick from the collection. He says the hat collection is sacred.
“I’ll stare at them for a couple of minutes to remind myself of some of the companies that used to be around,” he says.
Scott enjoys the hats, but he does hope they can find a permanent home someday where more people can see them.
“My dad was my best friend, and I’m proud of the goals he reached for. It is kind of fun to reminisce about it – it reminds me of my dad,” Legried says.
To put the hat collection in perspective, if Scott wore a different hat every day, it would take 319 years to wear them all.
View more American Countryside stories from Andrew’s travels.
