Zach Fletcher, Executive Director of the America 250 Tour, joined the show to unveil a sweeping coast-to-coast celebration marking the 250th anniversary of the United States. Over the course of 50 weeks, the tour will visit all 50 states and 60 locations, honoring both iconic and overlooked moments in American history—from the Revolutionary War to the Wright brothers, the space race, and even the invention of the telephone.

But it’s more than just a party—it’s a mission to restore national pride and educate the public. Fletcher emphasized that the tour is strictly nonpartisan and aims to reconnect Americans with their local and national heritage through partnerships with museums like the Smithsonian and grassroots historical sites across the country. The tour is a call to rediscover the stories that made America—and to remind every citizen, regardless of politics, why those stories still matter.

Transcript

Sam Stone: Our next guest up, Zach Fletcher, Executive Director of the America 250 Tour, a monumental coast-to-coast tour celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. I got to tell you, Zach, he was gracious enough to join us in studio. Thank you for coming in here.

Zach Fletcher: Absolutely. My pleasure.

Sam Stone: We love having you. I'm pretty excited about this tour, and I don't get excited about this kind of thing, but man, we need some things to celebrate right now here.

Zach Fletcher: Yeah. I absolutely agree. I mean, it's an absolute monumental event, as you say. And kind of crazy if you really think about it. I mean, it's 50 states, 50 weeks, 60 locations in all these different states.

And really what it comes down to is just celebrating America and what made America America in the last 250 years. Not just the start of the shot around the world, but all the way through the Wright brothers flying the first plane here in America. We have the space race.

We have all these absolute amazing things that have happened in America, and we just need to celebrate those.

Sam Stone: How about the telephone? I mean, some of the most amazing basic things that the entire world lives on have been created here, and yet we're at a place, Chuck, where our schools don't celebrate us.

Chuck Warren: Well, that's my point here. Are you hoping... with this project, that we start building some pride again in America, because it seems like the only people who love America are Republican. And I love my independent and Democrat friends to start taking great pride in this country again, because everything they vocally moan and groan about, they do because they're in America, right?

They couldn't do it in most other places, right? So is part of the mission as well as to re-educate the public of like, this is the greatness of America?

Zach Fletcher: Absolutely. Yeah. In fact, we have a full education team on board, a national education team. We're working with local museums as well as national museums, anything from the Smithsonian all the way down to the Museum of the West here in town. Actually, it's great. Yeah, fantastic. I mean, people don't even understand their local history. I mean, you can walk down the street and I didn't even know, you know,

I've been to Arizona a few times and I didn't even know you had this unbelievable history within with with cowboys and all that stuff. And it just there's so many interesting history I didn't even know about.

Chuck Warren: Scottsdale likes to pretend it's still a cowboy town, which is the funniest thing in the world, which is nothing close to it, but it still likes to pretend it's a cowboy town.

Sam Stone: You know what the biggest – this hurts so much. I was lucky enough. We moved out here before Tombstone burnt down. A lot of people don't realize – Tombstone about 30 years ago now burnt down. The original historical town that had gone the O.K. Corral had been there from Wyatt Earp's days. The town caught on fire.

They have a real bad water situation. A lot of it burned. So a lot of it's been rebuilt. They tried to make it. But boy, the history when you walked down the street in Tombstone, the original street to the original OK Corral, the same footsteps as the Earps and the Clantons.

And I mean, the history in this region is amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

Zach Fletcher: We want to celebrate it. I mean, that's why we're going to every state. We want everyone to have an opportunity to not only celebrate the national history, but we also – this is the people's tour.

We want to celebrate the people's history inside here over the last 250 years. And the beautiful thing to answer your question previously, this is a nonpartisan type of event. This is just as simple as celebrating America. We welcome everybody. We don't want people on stage talking politics or anything like that.

We invite every American to be here because Americans deserve to know their history, deserve to celebrate their history in all aspects.

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