Two-Lane Tidbits
A grab bag of roadside moments, small-town surprises, and all the little bits that make the backroads worth wandering.
In the far northwest corner of Colorado, the westernmost town in the state, Dinosaur, welcomes visitors as they head to Dinosaur National Monument. Originally named Baxter Springs for the couple that owned the town, in the 1930s the town was more frequently referred to as Artesia and was officially incorporated as such in 1947. In…
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Opened in 1892 in old military barracks and rebuilt into its current building in 1896, the Meeker Hotel in Meeker, CO holds a few distinctions- it is one of the oldest operating hotels in Colorado and the only historic hotel still standing in the northwest part of the state. Meeker was a popular stage stop…
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Located approximately 35 miles southeast of Denver, Castlewood Canyon State Park has a number of trails across plains and through canyons alongside Cherry Creek. It also contains the remains of the Castlewood Dam. Built in 1890 to provide water for farming and production, as well as to hopefully entice settlers downstream, the dam suffered from…
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Once home to the Los Alamos Ranch School faculty, the buildings along the road that once ran through the school property in Los Alamos, NM became the residences of the most prestigious scientists involved in the Manhattan Project. At a time when homes with bathtubs were considered a luxury and were only being built with…
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The original hospital in Colorado Springs, the St. Francis Health Center, was built in 1887 as a one-story infirmary to provide medical services to injured railroad workers. After a train derailment near Leadville, it was decided that the city needed a larger hospital and one was built on the site of the now-abandoned St. Francis…
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These ruins are all that remain of the village of Santa Rosa de Lima which was located near present-day Abiquiu, NM. Around 1730, settlers started moving to the Chama River Valley and by 1744, the village constructed a church on the town plaza and there were at least 20 families settled nearby. Raids by local…
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Happy 95th Birthday to the US Highway System, including the most famous highway of all, Route 66! Before US Routes were established, a series of auto trails traversed the country. In 1925, the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHO) created a national numbering system for roads, with north-south roads having odd numbers and east-west…
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Back in the days of comic strip heroes, adventurer and Air Force Captain, Steve Canyon, was a popular guy. Post World War II, the residents living in Squirrel Gulch in Idaho Springs, CO were feeling particularly patriotic and agreed to rename their region Steve Canyon, after the comic book character. Despite having nothing to do…
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A mining town created during the Pikes Peak Gold Rush in 1859, Georgetown, CO found its riches in silver. The local mines were so prosperous that it once rivaled Leadville as the mining capital of Colorado and earned the title of “Silver Queen of Colorado”. Georgetown had more than 10,000 residents in its heyday, compared…
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Georgetown, CO has a number of neat historical buildings, but one of our favorites is the former Buckley Garage. Housed in a building constructed in 1877 that originally had two stories (what happened to the top one seems to be lost to history), John Buckley bought the building in 1933 and operated a blacksmith shop…
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