6 Quirky Little Towns In Colorado
Colorado has always been a bit eccentric. It claims to be the birthplace of the cheeseburger (a surprisingly contested title), and it is the only state that has ever turned down the chance to host the Olympics. The state also has a quirky fascination with celebrating the dead, holding an annual festival dedicated to a preserved body and a yearly coffin race. And these oddities are just the tip of the iceberg! Buckle up and get ready to explore some of Colorado’s quirkiest corners in these six little towns.
Manitou Springs
The Manitou Springs community brings out its quirky side each October, during the annual Emma Crawford Coffin Races and Festival. This event, held in honor of a beloved local resident, features a race with large, box-like vehicles that teams create and push themselves. Along with the famed coffin race, the day includes a parade, an award ceremony, and an after-party that celebrates these comical racing vessels.
Manitou Springs is also famous for its various springs that are located throughout town, many of which have carbonated water! You can try some of this water for yourself at springs such as the Cheyenne Spring on Manitou Avenue, which produces natural, sweet soda-like springwater. For a little throwback, pop into the Manitou Springs Penny Arcade, open seven days a week, and offering hundreds of games available to play, like pinball, skee ball, pool, boxing machines, and more.
Estes Park
Oddly enough, Estes Park also has a beloved annual festival centered around the dead. This festival, known as Frozen Dead Guy Days, celebrates Grandpa Bredo, a 120-year-old whose body has been preserved in liquid nitrogen as part of a cryonics experiment. Each March, commemoration festivities include a Frozen Dead Bar Crawl, coffin races, and a polar plunge, among several other entertaining events. While you’re in town, consider taking a ride on the Mustang Mountain Coaster, an alpine coaster that allows you to explore the mountainside at an exhilarating pace!
The Stanley Hotel is the perfect place to spend the night after a day of your adventures, established in 1909 and renowned for being the hotel that inspired Stephen King’s The Shining. You can even check out its paranormal claims by signing up for a three-hour interactive paranormal tour that takes place on the property.
Morrison
If you’ve ever wondered what it's like to be a giant, you can do so in Morrison. This small town, just a half hour from Denver, is home to Tiny Town, a miniature village that opens each year between Memorial Day and Labor Day. In addition to wandering through the tiny streets, visitors can hop aboard the train or enjoy a picnic, feeling positively huge among it all.
Dinosaur fanatics, meanwhile, will love exploring Dinosaur Ridge, an outdoor museum with over 250 fossil tracks and the site of the first-ever-named Stegosaurus bone fossils. Visitors here can choose between a self-guided tour, a guided walk, or a guided bus tour. Just a short drive north of Morrison, you can also visit Smooth Alpaca, an immersive farm where you can feed the animals, pet them, and learn about what life is like for an alpaca farmer.
Ouray
While Ouray is beautiful all year round, it becomes particularly unique in the winter, when the Ouray Ice Park opens. This climbing park is free and open to the public, set in a natural gorge with over 150 named ice and mixed climbs to enjoy. It also hosts a multi-day ice festival in January that celebrates the sport of ice climbing.
Back in town, you’ll find quirky exhibits like the Ouray Alchemist Pharmacy Museum, which takes visitors back in time to what a Wild West Pharmacy was like, displaying more than 700 hand-blown pharmacy bottles, many of which contain their original drugs! Travelers who visit Ouray in the warmer months can drive out to Box Cañon Falls Park, which is home to a thundering cascade that you can reach via a 500-foot walk.
Cripple Creek
If your visit to the alchemist pharmacy in Ouray piqued your interest about life in the old west, Cripple Creek makes an excellent next stop. This town is home to attractions like the Outlaws & Lawmen Jail Museum, a red-brick building that once served as the county jail. The cells inside have remained intact, with displays showing what both the law and the lawless were like, along with samples of 20th-century police logs.
You can also hop aboard the Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad in town, a century-old steam engine that offers excursions each summer. The winter, meanwhile, brings eccentric seasonal events like the Ice Castles, an icy amusement park with ice slides, ice caverns, a frozen bar, crawl tunnels, and ice sculptures.
Paonia
Surrounded by vineyards and orchards, Paonia offers a refreshingly unique side of Colorado, with fertile land that produces an abundance of fruits and wines. Orchard Valley Farms and Market is a great example of this thriving agriculture, offering U-pick produce in the spring and summer, a well-stocked farm market, and even a wine-tasting room. For more wine, spend an afternoon at Painted Vineyard, where a couple of shaded decks and patios overlook Mount Lamborn and the Gunnison River, giving you plenty of space to relax while you sip.
If you visit town on July 4th, you can also attend the Cherry Days Celebration, an annual festival that Paonia has hosted since 1947. There are all kinds of quirky activities throughout the day, including cherry pit spitting, cornhole tournaments, a wood-splitting contest, and more.
Year-Round Eccentricities
Regardless of the time of year that you visit Colorado, there always seems to be something quirky going on. The winter season brings ice parks and ice castles, while in the summer months, Morrison’s Tiny Town and Paonia’s Cherry Days provide eccentric fun. Even the museums often have a unique twist, featuring old western medicine and outlaw history that make the past feel surprisingly fresh and interesting. As you explore these spots for yourself, you might even stumble across a weird find of your own!
