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