From pioneering artists to obsessive curators and brazen builders, this route follows in the footsteps of a bold few—watch your step.
Rogue Routes: The Road to Pikes Peak

It’s no coincidence that Don Carlos Edwards broke into the food industry selling drinks from a tiny refreshments stand on a regional holiday known as “Pioneer Day.” Almost a century later, the fast food giant he created lays claim to the invention of the kids meal, Ranch Burgers, and “Fry Sauce.” From a single Arctic Circle Drive-In in Salt Lake City, Edwards built a veritable empire—62 outlets across six states in the Mountain West—on pure culinary innovation. 

His not-quite ketchup, not-quite mayonnaise Fry Sauce (whose secret recipe is closely guarded to this day) entered the realm of regional icon over the years, with area fast food chains attempting their own renditions and supermarkets selling Arctic Circle brand bottles of the inimitable house condiment. They were also the first chain to use solely Black Angus beef in their burgers, an industry-wide standard nowadays.

Pop in for a meal before your first leg of the trip. Try the Angus Ranch Burger (an A.C. original) with fries, and finish off with a “Brown Topper” (another A.C. original)—a chocolate-sauce-dipped ice cream cone. Just don’t forget to order Fry Sauce.

At-a-glance, what you see is what you get: “Ratio,” the only churchlike structure in Utah that doesn’t need your repentance, is quite plainly a “Pile of Big Blocks”—53 four-ton concrete blocks, to be precise. To the 89-year-old blind retiree who dreamed up its conception, however, it’s much more. “No one will remember me,” he told the Salt Lake Tribune, “but this is something I leave that will be immortal.”

While the cubes seem imperfectly aligned, the design is far from random: its arrangement is based on the Fibonacci sequence or Golden Ratio, a concept found elsewhere in some of the greatest architectural accomplishments on earth. A single gold-leaf plated cube sits atop the structure, reflecting the radiant desert sun at different angles throughout the day. Of the hundreds of sculptures completed by renowned Australian artist Andrew Rogers, Ratio is his largest at 44 feet tall.

Park behind the bank at Main Street and Walnut and cross the set of train tracks by foot to get an up-close look at Ratio. In case you need to sit and think about it, the artist left a set of wooden recliners.

The largest natural arch in the world outside of China—Utah’s 65-million year old Landscape Arch—has been shedding automobile-sized chunks of red rock over the last several decades. To some, it’s a sign that this spindly ribbon of rock is nearing the end of its life. To others, it’s dropping weight to hang tough for another several centuries.

There are 2,000 other arches spanning the aptly named Arches National Park, but Landscape is certainly the park’s most dramatic, cutting a lithe 290 feet across the desert sky. And while its projected natural lifespan is unknowable, (the forces that created the arch are surely still at work, eroding this beauty day-by-day), best to play it safe and make your visit this lifetime.

Park at Devil’s Garden trailhead for a quick one-mile hike lined with wild mountain aromatic plants to visit Landscape in the flesh. The paved road (Arches Scenic Drive) to Devil’s Garden will take you and a justifiably ogling stream of travelers past the iconic Courthouse Towers and a host of otherworldly rock formations, but the equidistant, off-road option (BLM 145) may thin the crowd to just you.

Since it was abandoned in the 1990s, most folks visiting the “ghost-town” of Cisco, UT saw, understandably, a ghost-town, albeit a unique one: rather than your run-of-the-mill pre-industrial debris, Cisco’s material landscape consisted of things like mid-century television sets, the shells of washing machines, and half-full plastic bottles of maple syrup. Through all the mess, one Chicago-based visual artist only saw potential.

Eileen Muzka is the sole year-round resident of Cisco, UT where she heads “Home of the Brave,” a non-profit artist’s residency hosting international makers and doers. The 100-building town is dotted with the work of past residents, from a wood-and-stone snake tangled up in a minibus to “Black Lives Matter” murals to intricately painted shells of refuse cars.

Be sure to fill up on gas when possible—"thinly settled” would be an understatement in these parts. Also keep in mind this is not a true ghost town. Treat Muzka’s realm the way you’d want her to treat yours, if you owned one.

While his friends were playing with toys and building snowmen, 4-year-old Richard Fike was busy collecting memorabilia of the Old West. By 8, he’d opened his first museum in his parent’s guest room. By 12, he got serious and began cataloguing his expanding trove of curios. By 56, the historical archaeologist had literally built a small village out of genuine artifacts.

Nearly 30 buildings and over half-a-million artifacts make up “Adobe Flats,” a fictional Wild West mountain village comprised of primarily non-fictional parts. While some buildings were fabricated to flesh out the “town,” a host of century-old buildings like Furman’s Drug Store, Schmidt’s Cash Store, and a German Lutheran Church were shipped here and restored from varying states of disuse.

The Miner’s Delight Saloon hosts authentic player pianos and violins, while a pair of Butch Cassidys chaps, used boxing gloves from 1920s heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, and playing cards signed by Sitting Bull make up only a fraction of Fike’s world of memorabilia.

Tincup, CO got off to a rough start. Unforgiving winters and the threat of Native American attack deterred most settlers to the fledgling mining town. The folks that ended up there were hearty, but a little rough-necked: the town marshal was shot dead in 1882. So was the marshal that replaced him.

Today, the mostly hand-built town dotted with century-old buildings is seasonally populated—in the summers, when there’s no snow, and in the winters, when there’s enough to snowmobile—but a handful of residents finally live comfortably year-round, without an inch of pavement, cell phone reception, internet, and for some, running water (the role of town marshal has, understandably, been dissolved).

It’s a place where every other home has a set of antlers above the door and an outhouse in the backyard; Where the tallest building in town—Town Hall—hosts square dances on Friday nights and mass on Sunday; Where dogs know no leashes, and if you’re still enough, a gray jay may perch on an outstretched hand.

A cemetery sits on the outskirts of town, with the graves of townsfolk and brave marshals dating as far back as 1904 right up until the present day. “My husband’s parents are buried there,” one of the several year-round residents told Atlas Obscura. “We’re headed there, too,” she said with a proud smile.

The Arkansas River spent about 3 million years eroding a 1,000-foot gorge through the plains region in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains. In 1929, the George E. Cole Construction Co. spent about six months building a 1,260-foot bridge straight across it. The impetus? Because they could. 

The Royal Gorge Bridge, built for the express purpose of viewing the gorge, is the highest suspension bridge in the United States: and with the Arkansas River below deepening one foot every 2,500 years, it’s height could clear the Chrysler building with an only increasing ease. A peak over the edge, in conjunction with furious winds funneled from the 10-mile long gorge below, is gripping even for the most adrenaline-seeking among us.

The nearly quarter-mile long bridge is walkable and handicap accessible. For the impatient crowd, there’s a gondola offering dizzying 360° views of the gorge below. For the intrepid, there’s also the highest zip-line in North America.

In 1941, while drilling for oil in the foothills east of the Rocky Mountains, the Conaco Oil Company was rumored to have struck a deep pool of thermal water instead. The rumor dissolved into mystery over the ensuing decades, until 1985 when Florence, CO resident LJ Conrad struck out down a dirt road following a hot tip regarding the potential location of the storied hot spring. Within a year, the Desert Reef Hot Spring was born.

Today, the hot spring is one of only a handful of clothing-optional facilities in the state. While there are memberships and changing rooms, the open-air facility is in every other way not-your-average spa. Wabi-sabi art installations, a bring-your-own food and beverage policy, and of course the wide berth given to nudity attract a free-spirited clientele wholly devoid of pretension typical of twee hot spring facilities. Then again, how many spas require a bit of off-roading?

In 2001, when semi-trucks carting what appeared to be giant pieces of a disassembled airplane began rolling into Colorado Springs, Steve Kanatzar immediately notified local news and radio stations. “I think there’s a guy who’s going to build an airplane restaurant here,” he recalls telling them, “and I think it’s going to have a real airplane.” Some guy was building an airplane restaurant, and it would have a real airplane. Kanatzar was that guy.

The Airplane Restaurant was a longtime dream of the former pilot that came true at a government surplus auction in 2001. After he signed papers promising he wouldn’t resell the Boeing KC–97 tanker to any foreign entity, he set to work transforming one of the largest propeller-driven aircraft ever made into a restaurant.

Today, the port wing of the one-time international mid-air refueling vessel soars through a high-ceilinged dining room rife with aviation memorabilia, with the fuselage abutting the building hosting a handful of cozy, leather booths. While the kitchen churns out standard American fare from Swiss & Mushroom Burgers to Craisin Walnut Salads, this may be the only way to enjoy a Buffalo steak cooked to order on an airplane.

Even if you knew the secret recipe for Pikes Peak Summit House’s cult-famous donuts, you couldn’t just make them anywhere: the recipe is tailored to the peak’s 14,115-foot altitude, meaning if you were to attempt them closer to sea level with higher air pressure, they’d collapse. 

With the mountain’s railway closed for renovations until 2021, there’s only two ways to eat these somehow dense-yet-fluffy donuts in their natural habitat—by a 13-mile vertiginous hike, or by driving the 19-mile series of white-knuckle, alpine switchbacks known as Pikes Peak Highway. Either way, you’ll have earned a snack for ascending the treeline.

With trace hints of cinnamon and vanilla, the mystifying donuts are best dipped in hot chocolate while taking in the hundred-mile views from the Summit House’s observation deck. Foxes may meander below the deck, sniffing out chipmunks from among craggy rocks, while raptors soar the mountain updrafts overhead. 

Work off the donuts on any one of the majestic hiking trails webbing the peak before you head back—those downhill, hairpin turns are no place for a food coma, even with guardrails. 

By the time you reach Pikes Peak International Raceway, you’ll have earned your stripes. You’ll know speed from the seemingly endless straightaway of Utah’s Route 191, where in the dry, motionless desert, you may exceed the 100 miles-per-hour mark without noticing. You’ll know control from Colorado’s Route 50, snaking, sloping, and slanting over the Rocky Mountains through rugged National Forest roads. 

If you’re looking to put these skills to the test outside the auspices of law enforcement, you’ll find no better place than Pikes Peak International Raceway, dubbed “the fastest one-mile paved road anywhere.”

From training programs and courses to open lapping and drag strip time trials, there’s no shortage of ways to sate your need for speed. It’s the latest in the region’s historic obsession with racing, which started with 19th century horse tracks and saw dozens of racetracks proliferate the landscape in subsequent years.