Climb a granite tower built without a nail or a piece of wood
No wood, no nails, 1937
A granite memorial tower on the side of Cheyenne Mountain, containing the tomb of the man who built it and overlooking the city he shaped.
Why it's unique
A 114 foot, five-storey tower completed in 1937 from Cheyenne Mountain granite quarried 700 feet from where it stands, built with no wood and no nails anywhere in it, bound instead by 200,000 pounds of steel and thirty wagon-loads of cement.
It is also a private tomb you are allowed to climb. Spencer Penrose began it in 1934 as his own resting place after a throat cancer diagnosis, and he and his wife Julie are interred here. He renamed it for Will Rogers after Rogers died in a plane crash in 1935, midway through construction, and it was dedicated in 1937 in a ceremony broadcast nationally on NBC radio.
Before you go
Access is through Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, which surprises almost everybody. There is no separate entrance and no separate ticket, so plan the two together rather than making two trips out to the same mountain.
It still plays recorded carillon music out over the valley, which you will hear before you arrive. Penrose built the Broadmoor, the Pikes Peak Highway and the zoo as well, so the whole south side of the city is essentially one man's estate.