Built by a seventh grader, for middle schoolers.

I grew up on my family’s sheep and cattle ranch in Northwest Colorado and in Denver. Even as a kid, I could see how differently students from the city and the country understood agriculture and the West, and how little they knew about each other.

So I started Western Heritage Day in seventh grade, for kids my own age. In 2011, I brought 80 Kent Denver eighth graders to the Colorado State Fair. We’ve stayed true to that idea ever since: middle schoolers learning from real people in real places, in a day that feels like a field trip and not a lecture. We became a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2013. Since then we’ve taken more than 1,500 students to the State Fair in Pueblo and the National Western Stock Show in Denver, some years as many as 600.

After a pause during COVID, we returned to the Stock Show in January 2026 with Kent Denver’s sixth grade, and we’re growing from there. If you have ideas for reaching more students, I’d love to hear them.

— Tom Kourlis, Founder & Executive Director