Five Railroads Built Manitou Springs. One of Them Vanished.

Five railroads. One town at the foot of Pikes Peak. And one of those lines just straight up disappeared.

That is the story sitting inside a free museum about an hour from Denver, and here is the part people miss. Most folks blow past Manitou Springs on the way to somewhere else. They stop for the mineral springs, maybe the Incline if they hate their own legs, and then they keep moving. But the Manitou Springs Heritage Center and Museum at 517 Manitou Avenue is running an exhibit right now called "Manitou Rails!" and it is worth your attention.

It runs through Aug. 31, 2026. After that it is gone. So do not sleep on the calendar here.

The town that trains built

Here is the thing about Manitou Springs. It did not just happen. It got built, deliberately, by railroads that wanted to haul tourists from all over the country to the base of Pikes Peak.

The exhibit lays out all five lines through images, artifacts and video. You get the Denver & Rio Grande Railway and its Manitou Spur. You get the Colorado Midland Railway, which is the one that brought people in from across the country. And then you get what the museum flat out calls "Manitou's Lost Railroad," which is exactly the kind of phrase that makes me want to walk in the door.

Five railroads for one small town. That tells you how big the tourism play was down there. This was the destination, and the trains were the whole business model.

The exhibit also lets you take video "rides" on the Manitou Incline, the Red Mountain Incline Railway and the Pikes Peak Cog Rail. So you get to sit down and ride the thing without your quads filing a complaint.

The building has its own story

Side note, the museum itself is not some purpose built glass box. The building was the A&A Garage, which opened for business in 1950 at that same 517 Manitou Avenue address. So it started life fixing cars and now it is telling the story of trains. I love that kind of thing.

It has been recently renovated, and it leans into the quirky local lore. And I mean quirky. This is the place with a Van Briggle pottery collection and the story of men who pushed peanuts up Pikes Peak with their noses. Read that last part again. Peanuts. Up a mountain. With their noses. Colorado has always been full of people with too much time and too much determination, honestly.

Reviewers call it a small, underrated stop, roughly 15 to 45 minutes start to finish. So this is not an all day thing. It is the kind of place you fold into a Manitou trip you were already taking.

The part that actually matters: it is free

Admission is free. Seven days a week, noon to 4 p.m., or by appointment.

Free is a big deal right now, if you ask me. Between gas to get down there and whatever you drop on lunch in town, a free museum that respects your afternoon is a rare thing. And a free, recently renovated one telling actual local history that most people have never heard? That is the whole reason we do these Radically Colorado adventures in the first place.

If you want to make an event out of it, there is a free First Friday opening reception on Friday, Aug. 7, 2026, from 5 to 8 p.m. Refreshments, live music by Ophelia's Fate featuring Jon Neukam. So you can walk the exhibit, grab a drink, and hear some music, all for nothing.

The museum's number is 719-685-1454, and the site is manitouspringsheritagecenter.org if you want to line up an appointment outside the noon to 4 window.

Why I keep coming back to towns like this

Look, I have watched a lot of Front Range towns try to figure out what they are. Manitou Springs already knew a hundred and something years ago. It was a tourist town on purpose, built by five railroads, and that identity is baked into the streets and the buildings you are still walking through today.

That history is not just trivia either. It is the reason property in Manitou holds the character it holds. When a town gets built as a destination first, you end up with a walkable little core, tight lots, old bones, and a whole different feel than a place that grew up around a highway exit. That scarcity of true old destination towns on the Front Range is exactly why they hold interest, and value, the way they do.

But the reason to go this month is simple. The "Manitou Rails!" exhibit closes Aug. 31, 2026. The lost railroad, the peanut story, the pottery, the video ride up the Cog. All of it. Then it packs up.

An hour from Denver. Free. Open every day. Buckle up and go before the trains leave the station on this one.