History & Tradition

Each winter nearly 700,000 people visit the National Western Stock Show, an extravaganza of about 30 rodeos, 11 horse shows and countless other attractions just a couple of miles from the heart of Denver. For so many visitors from the increasingly urbanized West, the Stock Show offers a rare window into Western tradition and the enormous importance of the agricultural and ranching industries that have made their comfortable, networked lives possible.

For many other visitors, the National Western Stock Show is a pilgrimage, a gathering of the extended family that sustains and defines the West. Since the first Stock Show in 1906, it has been a place where generations of farmers and ranchers – people whose hard work feeds the rest of us – spend time reuniting with old friends, learning about new approaches and techniques in agriculture and ranching, and doing some business, year after year.

You’ll find a lot more detail on the National Western’s history and its modern manifestation on the Stock Show website. The Honoring the Legacy campaign is more than an investment in the future success of this great event. It’s an investment in transforming the underused and aging National Western Complex into a National Western Center, one that extends the National Western’s incredible tradition to major events throughout the year and to ongoing, diversified educational and research endeavors for the benefit of all of us in the West.