Bishop Castle

In 1959, Jim Bishop dropped out of high school in Pueblo after a teacher told him, by his own account, "You'll never amount to anything, Jim Bishop!" The same year, his parents signed for a parcel on Highway 165, bordered on three sides by the San Isabel National Forest, with $450 he had saved from mowing lawns, delivering newspapers, and working in his father Willard's ornamental iron shop. The castle's own history calls the parcel 2 1/2 acres. The Greenhorn Valley View, working from Custer County Assessor's records, puts it at 1.25 acres and says the $450 may have been a payment toward a price of $1,250.

The cottage

Jim and Willard camped on the land for 10 summers and began a one-room rock cottage in June 1969. The same assessor's records list a one-bedroom structure on the site in 1962, 7 years before the family's date. In 1971, Willard salvaged a 40-foot metal tank from the Sacred Heart Orphanage in Pueblo as a cistern and began wrapping it in stone. By 1972, travelers were stopping to ask for directions to the castle.

In the spring of 1973, Jim began digging to bedrock in front of the cottage. By the family's account, he told his father, "The people want a castle and I'm gonna' build them a castle!" Willard wanted no part of it, and one of the hand-lettered signs at the castle later made a point of how little his father had contributed.

Building alone

Bishop worked from 1969 to 2019 with no plans on paper, paying for materials from his wages as an ironworker and, later, from visitors' donations. KKTV reported that he hauled in 3 to 5 tons of rock every 3 days. "No bankers, no loans, no blueprints, no inspections," he told NPR in 1994.

Much of the rock came from the surrounding forest and roadsides. A local history says he held a Forest Service permit to haul rock, renewed every year, and The Gazette reported that the Forest Service warned him against scavenging; Roadside America names the Bureau of Land Management instead. He also fought the IRS over taxes, Custer County over zoning, and the Department of Transportation over highway signs. His son Daniel said the highway signs were "a big push for him going fanatical." In Daniel's words, "He saw signs for ski resorts, the big-business, big-money places, and he couldn't understand why there couldn't be signs for people who couldn't afford to ski." Handmade signs along the short trail to the castle spelled out his beliefs.

What stands

Westword, The Gazette, and the SPACES archive of artist-built environments give the tallest tower as 160 feet; CPR put it at about 165. The castle sits just above 9,000 feet. Inside is a great hall built like a Gothic church, with stained glass windows and, by Roadside America's account, nothing to sit on but a few folding metal chairs. No one has ever lived in the castle.

Wrought-iron bridges and stairways connect the towers. Bishop learned ironwork in his father's shop in Pueblo. A dragon's head juts from the roof, its scales riveted from stainless steel trays salvaged from a Pueblo hospital, with a hot air balloon burner fitted in its throat. The dragon breathed fire on Halloween 2024. A wireframe dome on another tower spins, and Bishop said it would attract visitors from outer space.

In 1988, Bishop's son Roy, who was 4, died at the castle while Bishop was clearing trees there. One tower is named Roy's Tower, and Bishop never finished building it up.

The trustee

In 2015, with Jim and his wife, Phoebe, both ill with cancer, the couple made David Merrill, a man Jim considered a friend, a trustee of the castle. Merrill then claimed he owned the property, and Custer County records showed it being turned into "Castle Church for the Redemption." KRDO reported his name for it as "Castle Church for the Redemption of the Office." The family said Merrill had offered to help with paperwork. "Next thing we know, he won't let us do anything with the castle and he's claiming it is his," Phoebe Bishop told KRDO.

The Bishops won a restraining order against Merrill, and in late September 2015 a judge ordered the title put back in Jim's name, to be recorded in Custer County. The family's legal costs came to about $20,000.

Later years

On March 28, 2018, an overnight fire destroyed the gift shop and a guest house, neither of them insured. The castle was not damaged, and the gift shop has since been rebuilt. Phoebe Bishop died of cancer the same year, and Daniel Bishop has looked after the castle since then. Jim Bishop had Parkinson's disease, and his last work, in 2019, was setting small rocks along part of the castle's Great Wall without concrete, because he could no longer mix and carry mortar. He moved into long-term care in 2023 and died in Pueblo on November 21, 2024, at 80. A public memorial was held at the castle on July 5, 2025.

Daniel plans to finish Roy's Tower, raise the shortest tower another 30 feet, and join the iron "bridge to nowhere" to the top of Roy's Tower. On June 24, 2026, he fell from the roof of a 30-foot structure he was building next to the castle, breaking his pelvis and ribs and puncturing a lung. The family canceled the castle's first Medieval Fair, planned for August 7 to 9 as a fundraiser for the newborn heart surgery charity Phoebe had founded.

On June 29, 2026, the Aspen Acres fire started near the Aspen Acres campground, and the castle was evacuated. Firefighters reported the fire within 200 yards of the castle on July 3. The fire went on to burn more than 100,000 acres, and the castle came through with a few burn spots at the edge of the property. When the family returned, they found that firefighters had signed the castle's visitor book and left donations in it.

The castle's own site says it is open every day of the year from sunup to sundown. There is no admission charge. Donations go in boxes around the grounds, and there is a gift shop and a snack bar. Most visitors park along the shoulder of Highway 165.

The castle closed for weeks in the summer of 2026 while the Aspen Acres fire burned around it, and it had reopened by September 25, 2026. The family posts closures and events on the Bishop Castle Facebook page, which is worth checking before a long drive.

Visitors enter at their own risk, and the family asks them to take responsibility for their own safety and for any children or pets with them. The castle was never built to code and is still an open construction site, with hundreds of open-air stone and metal steps, dark turret stairs, and iron walkways and bridges between the towers high above the ground. Some visitors skip the most exposed parts altogether.

From Interstate 25, the usual route is exit 74 at Colorado City, then about 24 miles on Highway 165 along the Frontier Pathways Scenic and Historic Byway. The family also hosts wedding ceremonies at the castle.