Inside a Fever Dream
You would have to see, touch and climb this place to believe it exists.
Before coming back to the UK, I got a few jaunts into the Colorado mountains. Not far, not long, not many, but enough for a taste of the Rockies.
After visiting Beulah, we took a road that turned out to be nine miles of winding, climbing dirt road through the San Isabel National Forest. Near the top, some aspens were beginning to turn golden for autumn. Needing to go slowly is a boon in such beautiful scenery.
When we got back to a paved highway, we were close to Bishop Castle, a place my brother and his partner had heard of but not visited.
This is it.
It's around 9000 feet up. (That’s well above my altitude ceiling of about 7500 to 8000 feet, so this adventure wiped me out.) It's difficult to describe—like falling into someone else's fever dream of incomplete rooms, spiral staircases of metal grid material, not enough railings, nooks and crannies and passages to thin air, metal towers that threaten to fall apart with every step, and a view all the way over to Pueblo's reservoir. We clambered all over it.
Here is how I understand the story behind this amazing place.
When Jim Bishop was young, a teacher told him that he would never amount to anything. It stuck in his craw. At age 15, with support from his parents, he bought this land for $450. In 1969 he began building what was supposed to become a cottage. Somebody said it looked like a castle. He started building a castle instead. His entire adult life has been focused on proving his teacher wrong.
Others in the family got involved. At some point another person got involved too, and then the family sought to push him out. Authorities have tried to stop the project, but it is still a construction site, always and forever… and the public can poke around all over it, through it, under it… at our own risk.
After going through what appears to be a drawbridge under construction, we weren’t sure how to get into the main building. At the back we found some steps to get to the “ground” level which is open-sided and then stairs to the first level. Inside, it looked like this.
Maybe people who donate more to the project than most visitors get to have a stained glass panel in their honor. That’s what appears to be happening.
Or maybe the stained glass panels commemorate people who have gotten married there. You can have your wedding there for $500. For a wedding, I think you would want to be on the next level up. It has a high vaulted ceiling, the peak of which is a skylight, and plenty of open floor space. It has a churchlike feel.
As we climbed to a metal balcony on the second level, my brother said, "You'll never guess what's up here." He was right. Daphne the goat followed a couple of guys from the balcony up some stairs to the top of one of the highest towers, then came down. She does it much more easily than humans do.
Around the other side, a dragon loomed above the balcony.
Although the balcony has a railing, the higher we went, the less we had railings or even handholds and the more rickety the metalwork felt. Some steps had holes in them where the metal grid material had given way. The bridge to nowhere swayed alarmingly with every step taken on it.
We went all the way to the top of each metal tower-topper (the spire and the geodesic frame). Above the stonework, the metal tower tops swayed and shook with every movement we made. We thought the spire was unsettling.
Then we went to the more bulbous tower-top and it was even more unnerving. It moved a lot.
But the views up there were spectacular. We could see the reservoir for the city of Pueblo!
The next day we felt this little venture in our knees and calves. It is one of the most wonderfully trippy places I have ever seen. How it stays open is a mystery. I’m glad I got to see it.
(All photos in this post are by Bonnie D. Huval, copyright 2024)
I never heard of this place. Wicked cool and also terrifying! Glad you braved the altitude to bring us this armchair adventure.