Colorado Springs Day Trip: An Easy Backroads Mountain Adventure

Colorado Springs Day Trip: An Easy Backroads Mountain Adventure

 

From historic gold mines, modern-day casinos, a gold mining hoax, to lovable donkeys, see how this easy day trip to Cripple Creek from Colorado Springs creates fun memories you’ll never forget.  

 

Driving on the Phantom Canyon Gold Belt Tour National Scenic Byway not only promises excellent photo ops but fun times with unique adventures. We share how to have an outstanding scenic Colorado mountain drive while driving through Phantom Canyon on your way to Cripple Creek and Victor. All on a tank of gas.

 

Getting To Phantom Canyon From Colorado Springs

 

Our day trip from Colorado Springs to Phantom Canyon started on Highway 115 south to Highway 50 in Penrose. Here, you can turn right towards Canon City on Highway 50 or keep going straight to Florence. From Florence go north on Highway 67 (Phantom Canyon Road).

 

Florence: The Antique Capital Of Colorado

 

Take our word, stop in the charming small town of Florence on your visit to Phantom Canyon. Florence is a popular destination for a fun weekend. It lies east of Canon City and is easily accessed from Highway 50 in either direction. We visited before we started our drive up Phantom Canyon and we’ll plan to see more in Florence next time. From Highway 50 turn south on Highway 67 at the small airport with Colorado Mountain Skydive. It’s right across from Phantom Canyon Road.

 

Florence is better known as the antique capital of Colorado. Besides antiques, you’ll find art galleries with working artists along with their painting and pottery studios. You can also find a few B&B’s, an RV Park, and a small chain hotel. Florence has several choices for places to eat like a steakhouse, cafes, a bakery, some fast-food chains, pizza, and Mexican. You’ll also find several places for coffee.

 

Phantom Canyon Gold Belt Tour National Scenic Byway

We recommend taking the road less traveled through Phantom Canyon on the way to Cripple Creek for a fun and scenic drive. Less traffic and scenic mountain views will always win with us. The road is gravel but easy to drive with plenty to see along the way. Keep your cameras ready because you’ll find plenty of photo opportunities.

 

We enjoyed driving Phantom Canyon Road partly because of its one-lane tunnels and geology. In some places, you drive through a narrow one-lane road that was blasted through rock. In other places, rock formations line the road while pointing straight up. We could imagine old trains coming through here with their billowing smoke.

Look for people camping along rivers too. Often they will be panning for gold along the river beds.  

 

Soon the road leads to a historic red steel bridge with wood planks. This is the only remaining bridge from the Florence and Cripple Creek Railroad.   

The road was an old railway bed used by Florence and Cripple Creek Narrow Gauge Railway for hauling ore and passengers between Florence, Victor, and Cripple Creek. You will drive through two tunnels and over three elevated bridges as you pass through Phantom Canyon. Elevation starts at 5,500 feet but rises to 9,500 feet. Phantom Canyon Road is 30 miles long and part of the Gold Belt Scenic Byway.

 

A Restroom and picnic area are located on each end.

 

Tip: Take the drive in Fall to see beautiful golden aspen trees.  

 

Phantom Canyon received its name from an old ghost story. Legend has it that some spotted a man walking along the tracks wearing a prison uniform from a local prison. Passengers who recognized him stated that he was executed a few days before at the prison.  

 

Explore Victor For Small Town Charm

 

Get a different view of Pikes Peak when you visit the small town of Victor. Located on the southwest side of Pikes Peak, this alluring former gold mining town begs to be explored.  

 

Victor has been noted as one of the best-preserved mining camps in Colorado. Imagine when the population topped out at 18,000 residents during the turn of the century. Victor, together with Cripple Creek, formed the second largest gold mining region in the United States. Now, a little over 400 hundred people call this semi-ghost town home.

 

First, driving into town from the higher road, you’ll notice old mining structures scattered around downtown’s 1890s Victorian-style architecture. Next, old steel mining carts welcome you to town while at the same time declaring their proud mining history. With a history of over 500 gold mines, there’s a reason the town calls itself the city of gold mines.  

What To Do In Victor

 

You won’t find any chain restaurants or stores when you arrive downtown. However, you will find historic hotels, restaurants, cafes, museums, and shopping.

 

Other things to do include hiking, road or mountain biking, renting an E-bike, horseback riding, antiquing, fishing, walking tours, and scenic drives just to name a few. In Winter snowshoeing and cross country skiing are popular. Speaking of hiking and biking, take the Golden Loop along its four historic mining trails where you’ll see old mining structures firsthand. If you want to see Colorado’s highest bridge at 250 feet then go west of Victor on Highway 67 to the Arequa Gulch Bridge.

 

For a unique Colorado experience, you can pan for gold and take a gold mine tour from the Victor Lowell Thomas Museum. Or, take the Gold Belt National Scenic Byway which Victor lies in the middle.  

 

Stop by the visitor’s center in the old train station for more information about Victor. Look for the old trolley car. 

 

Cripple Creek: Where Casinos Replace Gold Mines

 

As mentioned above, Cripple Creek and Victor made up a massive gold mining community. These two towns might have been much bigger if the 1884 Mount Pisgah Hoax wouldn’t have scared miners away. At Mount McIntyre, three men spread gold (also known as salted) around a worthless prospect hole thirteen miles west of Mount Pisgah then planted a fake claim sign. Next, they alerted the press but newspapers incorrectly specified the location as Mount Pisgah. Although miners quickly disproved the hoax, prospectors stayed away from the Cripple Creek area.

 

Gold was later discovered and by 1900 Cripple Creek and Victor were thriving mining towns. In three short years, Cripple Creek’s population went from 500 to 10,000 people.  

 

Today, the population is over 1,100 and slot machines replaced gold mines. In 1991 legalized gambling came to Cripple Creek and has slowly grown over the years. In the late 1990s and early 2000s small lesser-known casinos used historic downtown buildings. Now, larger, more popular casinos have taken over. The dusty old storefront casinos have been replaced with shiny new popular casinos. Downtown Cripple Creek has a new atmosphere and more tourists than ever before.

 

What To Do In Cripple Creek

 

• Ride the Cripple Creek and Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad through old ghost towns and former gold mines.

• Take a Molly Kathleen Goldmine Tour

• Visit Cripple Creek Heritage Center

• Cripple Creek Ice Festival

• Donkey Derby Days

• Celebrate July 4th

• Have a Gold Camp Christmas

 

Cripple Creek is located 20 miles southwest of Colorado Springs and has an elevation of 9494 feet. Victor and Cripple Creek are separated by less than five miles on State Highway 67 below Pikes Peak.  

 

Cripple Creek’s Lovable Donkeys Will Steal Your Heart

 

Most people visit Cripple Creek on a day trip for its small-town casino vibe. Above all, the lovable, good-natured donkeys roaming around town will steal your heart.  

 

Look for the herd roaming Cripple Creek’s streets and hillsides from mid-May to October. Often, the donkeys stay together in small groups waiting for petting and snacks on downtown streets. For a small donation, you can get healthy snacks from museums and shops in town. Most of these shops have snacks like apples, bananas, carrots, and other snacks suitable for donkeys.

 

IMPORTANT: Donkeys like to eat just about anything so make sure the snacks you feed them are approved as healthy for them to eat. Other foods can make them sick. Make sure they don’t eat any processed foods, sweets, chips, bread products, popcorn, or greasy foods.

 

Many of Cripple Creek’s donkeys are ancestors from the town’s mining days before trains came. They worked in Cripple Creek’s gold mines hauling ore from the mines and along steep, narrow mountain trails.  

 

The Two Mile High Club

 

Eventually, the railroad replaced the donkeys in the late 1920s and they were released into the wild around Cripple Creek.  Now, a non-profit organization named the Two Mile High Club care for the donkeys. Volunteers house, feed, and take care of their medications. The donkeys live here when they are not in town. Volunteers play many important roles caring for the donkeys. They transport them to and from town. Even the fire department helps by delivering water. The Two Mile High Club built a three-sided platform where you can feed the donkeys at their property outside of Cripple Creek.

 

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See The Colossal Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine

 

You can’t help but notice the modern gold mining operation that prevails between Victor and Cripple Creek. Simply, the Cripple Creek and Victor Gold Mine (CC&V) are huge. We could give you numbers and stats all day long but to see the mine in person you’ll get it.

 

Grassy Valley Mining Overlook

See a massive working gold mine from an overlook. Just east of Cripple Creek lies the Grassy Valley Mine Overlook. Drive over Hoosier Pass on Teller County Rd 821 to the overlook. You can’t miss it since the huge yellow dump body off of an old dump truck from the mine makes a viewing tower. Look down into the Wild Horse Extension Surface Mine from the edge to see how gigantic it is. The mine’s 250 ton Cat 793 haul trucks look like ants slowly moving along the dirt roads inside.  

 

More Ways Back To Colorado Springs

The easiest and quickest way back to Colorado Springs from Cripple Creek would be Highway 67 north to Highway 24 in Divide. Then take Highway 24 back into Colorado Springs.

 

For a more adventurous and fun route, we took gravel forest roads through the mountains. We eventually came out on the backside of Cheyenne Mountain on Old Stage Road and entered Colorado Springs in between Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Seven Falls. The roads were good enough that a passenger car could easily drive it but in some places, you should take it slow.  

 

Final Thoughts

This still remains one of our favorite day trips from Colorado Springs. With so much to do and see you can’t go wrong.

 

Thanks for reading Colorado Springs Day Trip: An Easy Backroads Mountain Adventure.

Tom and Kristi

 

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