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Victor Trading Company
Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center
Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center
Cripple Creek District Museum
The Butte Theater
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Pikes Peak Heritage Center
Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine
Cripple Creek & Victor Narrow Gauge Railroad
Victor Mining District
Gold Belt Byway

Gold Belt Byway - Road Tour

Take a drive through history along the Gold Belt Byway. The roads themselves are part of the personality of the Gold Belt Scenic Byway. The byway follows historic railroad and stagecoach routes, leading you to North America's greatest gold camp, three world-class fossil sites, and numerous historical sites.

The Shelf and Phantom Canyon Roads offer adventurous driving experiences along unpaved routes through winding canyons. Paved roads wind through the gently rolling mountain parklands of the High Park route, where Colorado's highest mountain ranges rise in the distance. Teller 1 (a county road) travels through the pastoral Florissant Valley, with Pikes Peak in the background.

The five byway communities invite you to share in their rich history. In Cripple Creek, the historical hub of the mining district and a National Historic Landmark, visitors enjoy the variety and beauty of the early 1900s architectural styles in the downtown district.

The area's mining heritage continues in Victor, the City of Mines. Surrounded by hundreds of historic mines, Victor is the headquarters for a modern gold mine. Victor's downtown district, a National Historic District, includes beautifully restored buildings.

To the south, you can enjoy the Royal Gorge as well as restaurants, museums, and historic sites in Canon City and Florence. Florissant, the Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway's northern gateway, offers the Florissant Heritage Museum to interpret the area's numerous historic sites and Ute cultural sites.

Visit www.goldbeltbyway.com for more complete information about the Gold Belt Byway tour.
Length: 131 miles. Driving time: 5 hours.

In the early 1890s the mining towns in the shadow of Pikes Peak enjoyed the greatest gold boom the state has ever known. This 131-mile circuit tours historic Cripple Creek, Florence, McCourt, Adelaide, Wilbur, Victor, and other former gold camps. The roads are narrow and rugged in places - one stretch of the Shelf Road clings to a canyon wall 200 feet above the stream bed - but the payoff comes in the outstanding scenery: majestic Pikes Peak, the unspoiled Beaver Creek Wilderness Study Area, spectacular Royal Gorge, and miles of high-country beauty. Two significant fossil areas - Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument and the Garden Park Dinosaur Fossil Area - lie along the route.

The Gold Belt Tour was designated by the U.S. Secretary of Transportation as a National Scenic Byway in 2000. It is one of ten America’s Byways® designated in Colorado.

Gold Belt Byway Detail Map



 

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