Wonder View Tower

Entrance to the Wonder Tower, © Debi Boucher

As a young man, Jerry Chubbuck, a local cattle rancher and amateur archeologist, visited The World’s Wonder View Tower—a rambling, 20-room cavern that housed a gas station, restaurant, motel and dance hall on Colorado’s eastern plains.

Built alongside Colorado Highway 24 by Charles W. Gregory, the tower stood 60 feet high. Gregory would call out to motorists using a bullhorn, inviting them to catch a view of six states: Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Mexico and South Dakota.

Gregory died in 1942, and Interstate 70 bypassed Highway 24 in 1952. The tower served as a Greyhound bus station and a truck stop before finally sitting empty. Then in 1960, when the property went on sale, Chubbuck bought it, creating what is now known as the Genoa Tower and Museum.

The place resembles a huge indoor/outdoor flea market. “See 6 States” is prominently painted across the front of one end of the building. Fifty years of collecting fills every nook and cranny with “stuff”– more than 20,000 arrowheads, including one imbedded in a bison’s rib cage, as well as oddities, such as a two-headed calf and an eight-toed pig.

When you arrive, Jerry greets you at the door, and collects the $1 admission fee. He then offers to give your dollar back if you guess the 10 items he selects. Know what a leather nose picker looks like? How about rooster glasses? Neither did I, but I was happy to let Jerry keep my dollar.

The Petrified Room, © Debi Boucher

The place wasn’t busy the day I visited, so Jerry followed along as I wandered from room to room. When I walked onto the dance hall stage, I noticed a definite backward tilt. Jerry told me that was to keep the drunken musicians from falling forward into the crowd.

Every room is named. There’s the Indian Room, filled with Native American artifacts, the Petrified Room, lined (of course) with petrified wood, the Branding Room, and the Rock Room, which was once the café and said to be walled with rocks from every state in the country. Most everything you see crammed into these rooms is for sale.

Jerry sent me up the tower on my own, and I began the ascent on the 87 steep and narrow steps leading to the top. Three landings along the way feature brightly painted rooms, each one smaller than the last. A hatch at the top of the tower leads to the outdoor lookout, where the view is stupendous. I couldn’t quite make out where all six states would be, but I took Ripley’s word for it.

Parked in the front lot are two old junkers, tires sunk deep in the dirt, insides filled with old glass bottles. Jerry told me that one of the cars, the Lincoln, was abandoned 20 years ago when the driver pulled in and asked if he could park overnight. The man put the keys in his pocket and walked away, and Jerry says he never saw the guy again. But the car is still there in case he comes back. I asked about the other car, the Olds. "Oh,” Jerry said, “I parked that next to it later, so it would look better."

World’s Wonder View Tower – Genoa Tower and Museum 30121 Frontage Road, Genoa, CO 80818, 719-763-2309

Debi Boucher, freelance writer and photographer based in Colorado Springs.

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