Experience the best of Cañon City

Cañon City lies on the Arkansas River where it leaves the mountains, at about 1,600 metres, with its streets of brick Victorian buildings and a collection of prisons that earned it a reputation as a prison town. One of them, the former women's prison, is now a museum of Colorado's prison history.

Eight miles west, the Royal Gorge Bridge crosses a granite canyon 291 metres above the river; built in 1929, it was the highest bridge in the world until 2001. Rafting through the gorge and Browns Canyon is popular, and Garden Park, a fossil area north of town, yielded Stegosaurus and Allosaurus skeletons in the 1870s, with a small museum of dinosaurs in town.

Green chile, grown in the Arkansas Valley around nearby Pueblo, tops burgers and burritos in the town's diners, and brewpubs pour local craft beer. The skies are dry and sunny, with four seasons and snow mostly in the high country.