Western Heritage Day takes 5th–8th graders to the National Western Stock Show or the Colorado State Fair. We pair classroom curriculum with lively, hands-on immersion, with stations led by ranchers, farmers, and artists. Students learn where their food comes from and what the West is all about.
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Talking with a real cowboy next to real cows. Learning about Colorado history while gripping a historic mano and metate. Students leave with something a textbook can’t give them: a feeling for the West and a connection to where their food and their state come from.
We bring in experts who live this every day, so students learn from real people, in the real place. Each day is planned in advance with classroom teachers and taught by deep experts in their fields, including CSU professors and History Colorado staff.
Denver, every January. The West’s premier livestock and rodeo event, with a professional rodeo in the afternoon.
Pueblo, late August. A working agricultural fair, with livestock barns, exhibits, and Colorado history.
Before Western Heritage Day, only about one in four Pueblo students understood that water scarcity is a real problem. Afterward, nearly all did. (Post-program surveys, State Fair, 2016–2019)
Tom Kourlis grew up on a sheep and cattle ranch in Northwest Colorado and in Denver. He started Western Heritage Day in seventh grade, after seeing how differently city and country kids understood food and land. In 2011 he brought 80 Kent Denver eighth graders to the State Fair. More than 1,500 students later, the program still works the way a middle schooler would want it to: hands-on, short, and led by people who live it.
Send a note with your grade, group size, and what you’re teaching. We’ll work out the right setting and shape the day around your curriculum.