Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway
Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway is a National Scenic Byway in Colorado. Within Colorado it covers roughly 140 miles. The map below shows its route. Use “Plan a drive” to open it in the Road Sorties route planner — already routing along Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway with scenic roads turned on, ready to add your own stops.
The Gold Belt Tour links Cañon City with the historic gold-mining district of Cripple Creek and Victor, partly over the narrow, cliff-hanging Shelf Road and Phantom Canyon Road — both former railroad and stage grades that are unpaved and not for the timid. Along the way lies the Garden Park Fossil Area, source of some of the most important dinosaur skeletons ever found. The high mining towns preserve a remarkable amount of Gilded Age architecture.
- Shelf & Phantom Canyon roads
- Cripple Creek & Victor
- Garden Park dinosaur fossils
- Cañon City
- historic gold district
Designated for its historic qualities
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Places to stop along Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway
Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument
Giant petrified redwood stumps and a trove of 34-million-year-old fossil insects and leaves, preserved under volcanic ash, with easy trails through the meadows.
WebsiteCripple Creek
The old gold-rush camp at the center of the byway, now a casino town; the Mollie Kathleen mine takes visitors about a thousand feet underground.
Garden Park Fossil Area
Quarries along Shelf Road where 1870s Bone Wars crews dug some of the first Stegosaurus and Allosaurus skeletons, with short interpretive trails.
WebsiteRoyal Gorge Bridge
A 1929 suspension bridge about 950 feet above the Arkansas River, now part of a park with a gondola and zip line across the gorge.
Website
Where to Stay along Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway
5 campgrounds and RV parks sit within about 5 miles of Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway.
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Photos of Gold Belt Tour Scenic and Historic Byway
What is a National Scenic Byway?
National Scenic Byways are roads recognized at the federal level for at least one outstanding quality — scenic, natural, historic, cultural, archaeological or recreational — that gives travelers a reason to seek them out rather than just pass through.