Things to do / Travel Guide
- Florence, near Canon City, is home to one of the only two “supermax” prisons in the U.S., the other one being in Marion, Illinois. Held secure in the prison are such household names as Theodore Kaczynski (a.k.a., the Unabomber), Richard Reid (a.k.a., the Shoe Bomber), David Lane (infamous white supremacist), and Terry Nichols (conspirator in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing).
- Katherine Lee Bates wrote “America the Beautiful” after being inspired on the summit of Pikes Peak, near Colorado Springs.
- Trail Ridge Road, State Road 34 in Rocky Mountain National Park, is the highest continuously-paved road in the U.S. It reaches a maximum height of 12,183 feet.
- Mt. Evans Scenic Byway, which ends at the summit of Mt. Evans, reaches the highest point of any paved road in North America, as it switchbacks up to a final height of 14,130 feet.
- The highest suspension bridge in the world is located over Royal Gorge, outside of Canon City. It's 1,053 feet above the Arkansas River and stretches 880 feet from end to end.
- By the time of its demise in 1943, the “Mighty Argo,” the city mill of Idaho Springs, was responsible for the processing of $100 million of gold ore (not even adjusting for inflation)!
- Denver International Airport (DEN), which has been lauded as the best and most on-time airport in the United States, covers twice as much land area as Manhattan.
- The Colorado Rockies' Coors Field in Denver rivals Chicago's Wrigley Field in amount of home runs hit from the park. The reasons for this are manifold, but one of the important ones is that the city's high altitude allows the balls to travel with less air resistance, and thus farther. The field is affectionately known as Coors Canaveral, after Florida's Cape Canaveral on the state's Space Coast.
- Many scenes of the recent film “The Prestige,” directed by the ever-original Christopher Nolan, were filmed in Colorado Springs.
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