Genoa's Six-State Tower Turned 100 and Came Back From the Dead

Two-headed calf. Eight-legged pig. Fifty thousand types of glass bottles. And a 65-foot tower where a guy once swore you could see six states at once.

That is not a fever dream. That is Genoa, Colorado. About 100 miles east of Denver, just off I-70, way out where the plains go flat and golden and most people have their cruise control set for somewhere else.

The World's Wonder View Tower sat dark for 13 years. And then in May 2026, it came back. Timed right to its 100th birthday. So if you have driven past that exit a hundred times without thinking twice, this is the part people miss. There is a genuinely weird, genuinely historic landmark sitting right there, and it is open again.

A filling station that got out of hand

Here is the thing about the guy who built it. His name was C.W. Gregory, and folks called him Colorado's P.T. Barnum. That tells you everything.

Gregory and his partner Myrtle Le Bow started with a filling station in 1926. Just gas and a roof. But Gregory was a showman, so the thing kept growing, and by about 1930 it had become a tower. A hand-built, 65-foot tower rising out of nowhere on the eastern plains.

And the pitch? Oh, the pitch was perfect. Climb to the top on a clear day, Gregory told travelers, and you can see six states. Colorado. Kansas. Nebraska. Wyoming. New Mexico. South Dakota. Six.

Now, I will let you make up your own mind about the physics of that. But in 1934 the site actually got confirmed as the highest point between New York and Denver. So the man was not entirely blowing smoke. He just knew how to sell the view.

The dollar and the eight-legged pig

Fast forward to 1967. Jerry and Ester Chubbuck take over, and they run the place like it is their life's work, which it was. Admission was one dollar. One. For decades.

And for that dollar you got the tower, sure, but you also got the museum crammed inside it. This is where it gets good. Arrowheads. Fossils. Old West weapons. More than 50,000 types of glass bottles. The two-headed calf. The eight-legged pig. Just cabinet after cabinet of the strangest stuff a person could collect in one lifetime out on the plains.

Then Jerry Chubbuck died in August 2013. The tower closed. And on September 20, 2014, the whole collection, the whole weird beautiful mess of it, got auctioned off piece by piece. That felt like the end. A lot of these roadside places die exactly like that, quiet, and the building just sits there rotting next to the interstate until somebody knocks it down.

Somebody showed up

But in 2016 a group of fans did something you do not see much. They bought the property outright and then donated it to a nonprofit, the Friends of the Genoa Tower, Inc.

From there it was the long grind. Restoration ran about $3 million, drawn largely from Colorado's historic preservation funds. That is real money for a hand-built filling-station-turned-tower in a town most people cannot find on a map. And honestly, good. We tear down enough out here.

The tower officially reopened in May 2026. Thirteen years dark, back on its 100th anniversary.

The Red Room

Here is the part that makes this more than a nostalgia project. Denver artist Lonnie Hanzon built an immersive installation inside called "The Red Room," also going by "The State of Rediness." It is maximalist, a little overwhelming in the best way, and it pulls straight from the tower's 1960s paint scheme. So you have got this century-old plains oddity and a contemporary Denver artist having a conversation inside it. That is a reason to go even if you have seen the view before.

How to actually do it

Couple of things to know, because they changed the setup.

The address is 30121 Old Highway 24 in Genoa, 80818. You will also see it listed as 30121 Frontage Rd. They are doing reserved timed-entry tickets now, so you cannot just roll up the way you could in the dollar days. Plan it.

For the 2026 season the hours ran 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, Memorial Day through Labor Day. The season wrapped Saturday, September 26, capped with a 6 p.m. harvest-moon party out there under that huge dark plains sky, which, if you ask me, is the correct way to close a place like this.

And here is the detail that got me, the real estate guy, paying attention. Organizers are converting an adjacent apartment into an Airbnb. So you could actually stay on-site, right off I-70, in the shadow of a 100-year-old tower full of ghosts and glass bottles. Hayley would either love that or never forgive me. Probably both.

Put it back on the list

Look, the eastern plains do not get the love the mountains do. Everybody is pointed west. But this is a Radically Colorado adventure hiding in plain sight, a weird hand-built monument to one showman's nerve, saved twice now by people who refused to let it go dark for good.

Six states on a clear day. One dollar's worth of wonder, even if the ticket costs more now. Ninety minutes east of your front door.

Buckle up and go see it next season. It earned the trip.