The Country Bear Jamboree was originally intended by Walt to be placed in a ski resort he was trying to build in the mid 1960s. Walt knew he wanted some sort of show to provide entertainment to the guests at the resort, and he knew he wanted the show to feature some sort of bear band. He assigned the project to imagineer Marc Davis.

Davis, together with Al Bertino came up with many bear groups, including bear marching bands, bear mariachi bands, and Dixieland bears. Walt enjoyed them all, but unfortunately he died before he could make any real decisions regarding the show.

After Walt's death, plans for the show still carried on. The bears would be featured in the resort's Bear Band Restaurant Show, and it was decided that they would have a country twang. But while plans for the show progressed, plans for the ski resort did not. Instead, the imagineers working on the project decided to place the show in Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in time for its grand opening in 1971. Imagineer X Atencio and musical director George Bruns created songs for the bears to sing.

On October 1, 1971, The Country Bear Jamboree opened its doors in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World. It received so much good feedback that imagineers immediately planned to make a replica of the show to be placed in Disneyland. The addition to the show in Disneyland, it inspired a brand new land appropriately titled Bear Country. Because of the tremendous popularity of the show in Walt Disney World, excess capacity was added to the 1972 Disneyland incarnation in the form of two identical theaters, each housing a copy of the show in its entirety.

The Country Bear Jamboree was the unofficial, unaffiliated inspiration for The Rock-afire Explosion, an animatronic band that entertained children of the 1980s at ShowBiz Pizza Place restaurants throughout the United States. The band was lead by a hillbilly bear named Billy Bob who was clearly inspired by The Country Bear Jamboree.