Two-storey red brick Victorian shopfronts with arched windows and flower boxes, a red car at the kerb

Uniquely

Manitou Springs

Colorado, United States

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

Mike McBey · CC BY 2.0

7 records·within 6 km3.7 mi

An orange railcar numbered 25 stands at a platform beside a red sandstone wall, forested slopes rising behind — Trebz · CC BY 2.0

Ride the world's highest cog railway to a 14,115ft summit

The Broadmoor Manitou & Pikes Peak Cog Railway

Nine miles of toothed rack rail from a small-town depot to the top of a fourteener, the highest cog railway anywhere.

Highest cog railway on earthSeasonal

Watch teams race decorated coffins down the main street

Free

Manitou Avenue

Five-person teams race decorated coffins down the main street, in memory of a woman whose own coffin slid off the mountain in 1929.

The original coffin race, since 1995Seasonal

Climb 2,744 railroad ties up a stripped funicular railbed

Free

Manitou Incline

The rails came out in 1990 and left 2,744 sleepers behind, rising 2,000 feet in under a mile.

2,744 ties, 2,000 feet, 0.9 miles

Drink your way round eight naturally carbonated mineral springs

Free

Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce & Visitors Bureau

Eight public fountains, each pouring naturally fizzy mineral water with a different taste, and all of them free to drink.

Eight free fountains, eight tastes

A round sign lettered World Famous Penny Arcade in red on white, mounted with blue bulbs on a chevron against blue sky — bradleygee · CC BY 2.0

Crank a 1905 mutoscope at an arcade that still takes pennies

Manitou Springs Penny Arcade

Four hundred-odd machines across eight buildings, still fed with real pennies, the oldest of them from 1905.

Eight buildings, real coins

A rambling sandstone mansion with green half-timbered gables and a flagpole, entrance portico at the centre — Racemanryan · CC BY-SA 3.0

Tour a priest's castle built in nine architectural styles at once

Miramont Castle Museum

A French priest built this in 1895 and used nine different architectural styles, seemingly at random, across four storeys.

Nine styles, one building

Launch a fruitcake for distance at the Great Fruitcake Toss

Free

Memorial Park

Every January since 1996, a mountain town rents you a fruitcake so you can throw it as far as you can.

Rent a fruitcake, then throw itSeasonal

More experiences in Manitou Springs

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

6 entries

A slender pale column joins floor to ceiling in a brown limestone chamber, wooden railing posts along the path below — larrywkoester · CC BY 2.0

Explore an unlit cavern by hand-held lantern

Cave of the Winds Mountain Park

Ninety minutes through a deliberately unimproved cavern, lit only by the lantern in your hand.

No electric light, 90 minutes

Soak in a private cedar tub filled from a mineral spring

SunWater Spa

Twelve private cedar tubs on open terraces, each filled with water piped from the town's own Seven Minute Spring.

Twelve tubs, spring-fed

Buy directly from the maker at an artists' cooperative

Free

Commonwheel Artists Co-op

An artist-run co-op going since 1974, where the person selling you the work usually made it.

Artist-run since 1974

Rooms of stacked red sandstone built under a rock overhang, a visitor in a pale shirt stepping through a low doorway — hakkun · CC BY-SA 3.0

Walk through reconstructed cliff dwellings you are allowed to touch

Manitou Cliff Dwellings

Ancestral Puebloan-style cliff dwellings assembled at this site between 1904 and 1907, which you can walk into and touch.

Assembled here 1904-1907

A glass-plate photograph of water dropping into a dark pool between boulders, a small figure standing at the lip — William Henry Jackson · Public domain

Walk to a waterfall under a 1932 highway bridge

Rainbow Falls Historic Site

A short walk to a waterfall beneath a 1932 highway bridge, reopened in 2024 after three years closed by rockfall.

Shuttle in, Friday to SundaySeasonal

Take a four-course Victorian tea in a room of the castle's original brick

Miramont Castle Museum

Four courses and a pot of tea, served under a reproduction tin ceiling against the castle's original brick. Two seatings a day, and the room is small.

Four courses, two seatings a day