Two cyclists pass a corner building with a turret, beds of magenta petunias filling the foreground

Uniquely

Fort Collins

Colorado, United States

Things you can do here and essentially nowhere else. Not everything there is to do — just what you would travel for.

Citycommunications at… · CC BY 3.0

8 records·within 50 km30 mi

Pick out the Old Town buildings that became Disneyland's Main Street

Free

Old Town Square

The Disney art director who drew Main Street U.S.A. grew up here and came back to photograph it.

Where Main Street U.S.A. was drawn from

Stand above the most extensive Folsom site ever excavated

Free

Lindenmeier Site, Soapstone Prairie Natural Area

The richest Folsom camp ever dug, and above ground there is deliberately nothing at all to see.

12,000 years, and nothing to seeSeasonal

Follow the only federally protected river in Colorado up its canyon

Free

Cache la Poudre River / Poudre Canyon (CO-14)

One river in the whole of Colorado carries federal Wild and Scenic protection, and it runs through town.

Colorado's one Wild and Scenic river

Look for the bison bred back from Yellowstone genetics without the disease

Free

Soapstone Prairie Natural Area

A herd carrying Yellowstone bloodlines, with the disease bred out of it in a university lab down the road.

Yellowstone bloodline, brucellosis bred outSeasonal

Get behind the display case at a five-million-specimen insect collection

Free

C.P. Gillette Museum of Arthropod Diversity

Five million pinned specimens, and the ten minutes on public display are the least of it.

Five million insects, most of them not on show

An orange streetcar numbered 135 stands in a barn, its wooden cowcatcher lowered at the front — Jeffrey Beall · CC BY 3.0

Ride a 1919 Birney streetcar down the middle of Mountain Avenue

Fort Collins Municipal Railway

A 1919 streetcar still working the line it was bought for, down the middle of a residential boulevard.

Original car, original 1907 lineSeasonal

Play a street piano an artist is still painting

Free

Old Town Square

More than 150 donated pianos, painted in public in the square, and all of them still playable.

150 pianos, painted in public

Score next year's bedding plants alongside the industry judges

Free

CSU Annual Flower Trial Garden

A working plant trial where the public gets a scoresheet and a say in what nurseries stock next year.

A research trial you get a vote in

More experiences in Fort Collins

Not unique, and not pretending to be. Good things to do here that you could also do somewhere else.

11 entries

Walk through a butterfly house in a city botanic garden

The Gardens on Spring Creek

Twelve acres of city garden with a heated butterfly house running through the winter.

Butterflies year-round

Bottles ride looping conveyors across a brewery packaging floor under steel gantries — Greg Younger from Fort Collins, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0

Take the production tour at New Belgium

New Belgium Brewing

A proper production walk-through rather than a taproom talk, and it covers about a mile and a half.

90 minutes, 1.5 miles on foot

A stemmed glass of amber ale beside a bottle labelled 5 Barrel Pale Ale on a dark wooden table — Bernt Rostad · CC BY 2.0

Take the Odell tour for the beers you can only drink on it

Odell Brewing Company

The tour ends at a bar pouring one-off beers that are not sold anywhere else, including in the taproom.

One-offs poured in the Wheelhouse

Eat under a decade of 1980s pop culture

Totally 80's Pizza & Museum

Arcade cabinets, original film props and a wall of cereal boxes, free to walk through whether you eat or not.

Free museum, working pizzeria

Order the cinnamon roll at the oldest café in town

Silver Grill Café

Open since 1933, and the cinnamon roll is what locals actually send people for.

Serving since 1933

A Victorian sandstone house with steep shingled gables and a corner turret behind flowering shrubs — Gribeco · CC BY-SA 3.0

Tour the house of the man who laid out the wide streets

Avery House

Franklin Avery surveyed Fort Collins with unusually wide streets, and this was his house.

1879, and why the roads are wide

Walk the city's first waterworks

1883 Water Works

The city's first public works project, with the Overland Trail running straight through the site.

1883, 23 acres, open days onlySeasonal

See how the sugar beet colonies lived

Museo de las Tres Colonias

A preserved worker's cottage from the three neighbourhoods built for the sugar beet industry.

A company cottage, kept

A notched granite outcrop stands above a slope of pine forest under a clear sky — Lvaughn7 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Climb to the rock the reservoir is named after

Horsetooth Mountain Open Space

The city's signature hike, ending on the formation you can see from everywhere in town.

6.5 miles, and the whole plains

Two walkers stand beside a bare dead tree on a grassy ridge under towering white cumulus — csfs_volunteers · Public domain

Hike Arthur's Rock in Lory State Park

Lory State Park

The quieter side of the reservoir, with a moderate climb to a rocky overlook.

26 miles of trail, quieter side

Walk the painted alleys behind Old Town

Free

Downtown Fort Collins alleys

The alleys behind the main streets carry dozens of murals, including work by the Italian artist Peeta.

100+ murals, all free