National Pie Day Celebration: Tastings, Demonstrations, and Presentation by John Lehndorff
Categories: Arts & Entertainment Festivals Food, Dining, Wine Kid Friendly & Family
Date and Time
- Sunday, Jan 25, 2026 10am - 12pm
Location
Museum of Boulder
2205 Broadway
Details
The Museum of Boulder will host a special National Pie Day Celebration on January 25. The event will include a display of local pie artifacts, pie-making demos from local experts, pie samples from local bakeries, and pie recipes to take home and try.
Visitors can also view the new Boulder Eats exhibit exploring 150 years of food and dining along the Front Range of Colorado.
Hosting the event will be John Lehndorff, former Chief Judge for the National Pie Championships, Executive Director of the Boulder-based American Pie Council, spokesperson for National Pie Day, and director of the Great American Pie Festival. He will share local pie history and artifacts.
National Pie Day Guest of Honor will be Beth Howard, director of a wonderful new documentary, “PIEOWA: A Piece of America,” celebrating the myriad ways pie is woven into Iowa’s culture. Beth Howard is a self-described “pie evangelist” who ran a pie stand while living in the American Gothic House in Eldon, Iowa. She is the author of “World Piece: A Pie Baker’s Global Quest for Peace, Love, and Understanding.” Beth Howard will be showing “PIEOWA: A Piece of America” and sharing pie afterwards in Fort Collins on January 23 and in Boulder at the Dairy Center for the Arts on January 24.
Cost for general public: $20 Members: $10 EBT and Tribal Members: $10 Eventbrite fees added.
About National Pie Day:
All across the United States, January 23 is celebrated as National Pie Day, but most pie lovers don’t know that the holiday was born in Boulder in the mid-1970s.
Boulder County already had an illustrious pie history when Charlie Papazian, a nuclear engineer turned Boulder elementary school teacher, told his class he preferred pie over cake on his birthday, January 23. For fun, Papazian declared his birthday would be National Pie Day, and registered the holiday with “Chase’s Calendar of Events.” (March 14 celebrates math, not pie.)
Boulder would go on to be the birthplace of the Great American Pie Festival and the National Pie Championships. Charlie Papazian has gone on to become the godfather of homebrewing and honored at the Smithsonian Institution.
https://thedairy.org/event/pieowa-a-piece-of-america-jan-24/
https://www.lyriccinema.com/movie/pieowa-a-piece-of-america
About John Lehndorff:
John Lehndorff’s pie journalism has appeared in the Washington Post. He has judged dozens of pie contests and was the Chief Judge for the National Pie Championships. Lehndorff was the founding executive director of the Boulder-based American Pie Council, spokesperson for National Pie Day (Jan. 23), and director of the Great American Pie Festival. He hosts the Global Pie Society group on Facebook. His favorite pie is wild blueberry.
