Canon City, Colorado

Canon City is the Gateway to the Arkansas River Valley. The first English European to explore the area was Lt. Zebulon Pike in 1806. At that time he said, "No man will ever cross the Royal Gorge Canyon." Apparently that was the impetus for building the Royal Gorge Bridge many years later.

The coal miners in the area wanted to name the young city "Canyon City" because of its location. A reporter covering the story wrote a tilde over the "n" and transformed Canyon to Cañon, by which name the town was first written into the records in 1861.

Canon City is another town with a lot of Victorian/Territorial architecture. The area is also home to most of Colorado's prisons and the primary BLM office for southern Colorado.

At the Museum of Colorado Prisons their motto is: Stop and do time with us! The Penitentiary Museum, in the original Colorado Penitentiary, is a demonstration of life in an era when justice was sure and swift. Alferd Packer, the original "Hannibal the Cannibal," was one of the Colorado Penitentiary's more notorious prisoners. It was also convict labor chain gangs who built Skyline Drive, rising some 800 feet above Canon City, in the early 1900's.

The Peabody House was built in 1880 by James Clelland and for a while, was home to James Peabody, one of Colorado's governors. The mansion was restored to its original grandeur in 1993 as part of a downtown restoration project. The Peabody House is now occupied by the Canon City Chamber of Commerce.

The Red Rocks Climbing Area on Shelf Road is 12 miles north of Canon City on a white-knuckle drive. This one isn't recommended for RV's, campers or the faint-hearted as the road is perched high on the wall of a 4 mile canyon. However, the Red Rocks Canyon Park Area offers extensive world-class rock climbing. Featuring over 100 separate climbs, the unique formations in the area give a wide variety and degree of difficulty for rock climbers of all skill levels.

And then there's the famous Royal Gorge, site of the the world's highest suspension bridge. The Royal Gorge is a few miles west of Canon City. It's a place where the Arkansas River has carved itself a very deep and narrow path through some pretty solid granite. There's an excursion train (the Royal Gorge Route) that travels through the bottom of the gorge and a bunch of recreational stuff at the top, including a city park that features the famous suspension bridge. If you have a problem with heights, walking on this bridge is not for you.