Experience the best of Glenwood Springs

Glenwood Springs sits at the meeting of the Roaring Fork and Colorado rivers, in a valley of red and gold sandstone cliffs on the western side of the Rockies. The Ute people knew the hot mineral springs long before miners and settlers arrived in the 1880s, and the town grew into a spa resort with a Victorian hotel and a grand bathhouse. The broad outdoor pool, fed by springs that emerge hot from the ground, is still the centrepiece.

East of town, Glenwood Canyon, a narrow gorge of the Colorado with the interstate and railway threaded through it, leads to the trail up to Hanging Lake, a travertine-rimmed pool. The gunfighter and dentist Doc Holliday died in Glenwood Springs in 1887, and a memorial stands in Linwood Cemetery above town. Rafting on the Colorado starts nearby, and Aspen lies farther up the Roaring Fork valley.

Mountain-town breakfasts and Western steakhouses fill the main street, and peaches from the orchards around Palisade, farther down the Colorado, arrive at roadside stands. The valley bakes in July, and snow dusts the cliffs in winter.