Wonder View Tower

Genoa, Colorado

[Jerry Chubbuck passed away on August 4, 2013. The Tower has been closed since then. The contents were auctioned in 2014. A preservation group purchased the property in 2016, planning to reopen it to the public. Their latest estimate was 2026.]

From a mile away the Wonder Tower appears to be bustling. "See Six States!" yell the hand-painted signs. "Confirmed by Ripley!" You can see cars in the parking lot, and people at the top of the Tower, trying to identify the advertised six states.

Once you arrive, you realize that the parked cars are 50 years old and stuffed with sun-bleached bottles, their tires buried six inches deep in windblown prairie dust. The people in the Tower are crude fakes -- lumps of red sheets wearing sunglasses.

The World's Wonder View Tower was built in the late 1920s at what the U.S. Geological Survey said was the highest point between New York City and the Rocky Mountains, and was a welcome stop on US Highway 24. Charles W. Gregory, Colorado's P.T. Barnum, christened the structure "The Lighthouse of the Plains" and would stand on the Tower with binoculars to spot the license plates of approaching cars. When tourists were within earshot, he would boom state-appropriate greetings through a megaphone, such as, "How're things in the Buckeye State?" His billboard motto was Eat, drink, gas, and pop at the Tower.

Charles W. Gregory died in 1943, and although he wanted to be buried at the Tower, he wasn't. In time the interstate bypassed US 24.

The Tower, however, survived, thanks in large part to its owners beginning in 1967, Jerry and Ester Chubbuck. They charged only one dollar for admission. Small signs at the entrance cautioned the squeamish, "Animal Monstrosities," and "Two-headed calf."

The Chubbucks stuffed the tower with a mass of spoons, farm implements, and arrowheads, much of it nailed and screwed to the ceiling. The Branding Room, Petrified Room, Indian Room (with its rock walls "painted by an Indian princess") were jammed with bric-a-brac.

In the Animal Monstrosities Room, the jar containing the eight-footed pig was dusty dry, while the one-eyed pig jar leaked something we preferred not to investigate too closely. We noticed that the Talking Indian Mummy -- Jerry had wired it with a loudspeaker on an earlier visit -- was missing. It had been repatriated. "The Indians don't want you displaying their dead," said Jerry.

Jerry, surprisingly spry for his age, had a quiz he would pop on lucky guests called the "Guess What." He singled out ten unusual items, and if you guessed their identity or purpose you got your dollar back. No one could leave until Jerry had cycled through all ten. The items included rooster eyeglasses and camel nose bells.

Just about the only thing Jerry didn't have was a postcard of his own attraction. This was a notable flaw in the Wonder Tower's marketing plan, as were its lack of signs near the interstate (Government billboard prohibitions didn't help). But Jerry was always upbeat, and his collections of mysterious tools, murky things-in-jars, and tens of thousands of arrowheads and bottles usually kept tourists inside the Tower for far longer than they had planned.

No visit to the Wonder Tower was complete without a climb to the top. Flies buzzed through unscreened windows as you ascended its ladderlike stairs, six stories of them, past the fake people and even more perplexing exhibits, to the observation deck.

It is not a climb for the faint-hearted or flabby. But those who survive are rewarded with an impressive view of eastern Colorado, and possibly the air over Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, and South Dakota.