Bishop Castle
A Stone Castle In The San Isabel National Forest, Begun In 1969 By Jim Bishop As A One Room Cottage And Built Over More Than Fifty Years, Largely By One Man, Into A 160 Foot Structure With Towers, Iron Bridges And A Fire Breathing Dragon. Free To Enter. · Rye, Colorado
In 1969 a twenty-five-year-old named Jim Bishop bought two and a half acres in the San Isabel National Forest and began building a one-room stone cottage. Neighbours kept saying it looked like a castle, so he built a castle. More than fifty years later it stands around a hundred and sixty feet high - towers, a grand ballroom, wrought-iron bridges spanning open air, spiral staircases with no obvious end, and a fire-breathing stainless steel dragon made from hospital serving trays, all of it hauled, cut and set essentially by one man with no formal training, no crew and no blueprint. It is free to visit, funded by donations and a gift shop, and it has handrails where Bishop felt like putting handrails. Nothing else in Colorado is remotely like it. It sits on the Frontier Pathways byway in conifer woodland with no town around it, so the first sight of a hundred-and-sixty-foot castle through the trees is most of the effect.
12705 Colorado 165, Rye, Colorado, 81069, United States
Generally open daily during daylight hours, free of charge, though this is a private structure on a mountain road rather than a managed attraction and access can vary without notice. THERE ARE NO SAFETY RAILINGS IN MANY PLACES, no staff supervising the upper levels and no admission control - visitors climb entirely at their own risk, which the site says plainly. The Colorado 165 approach is a mountain road that can be snowy or icy in winter. Donations and the gift shop fund the work.