When I was a boy, growing up in the town of Flagler (population: around 600 in the 1980s) in eastern Colorado, there wasn’t much to do in one’s free time but I never got bored.
Flagler was very fortunate to have a movie theater that presented movies on weekend nights, except on those weekend nights when the Flagler Panthers hosted high school football, basketball, and volleyball games since everyone went to those instead of “the Show,” as we called it. That theater, still in operation and sporting a new digital projector and new seating, was where I first saw movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981) and “E.T. the Extraterrestrial” (1982), instilling in me a deep and lifelong appreciation of the movies.
For more entertainment, there was a reservoir a few miles east of town that was so full when we first moved to Flagler in 1979 that the lake was overflowing its impoundment dam. It was a favorite destination for eastern Colorado anglers and waterskiers – unthinkable now because, due to agricultural demands for water downstream, the reservoir has been no more than a muddy drainage of the Republican River for many, many years.
I remember my high school chums and I, perhaps after the Show, cruising the six blocks of Flagler’s Main Street in our vehicles on weekend nights by putting the transmission in “D” and taking our foot off the brake. It provided some good times, at three miles an hour.
Much of the lack of boredom of my childhood is due to the many other pastimes available in eastern Colorado: museums, other movie theaters, and attractions like the World’s Wonder View Tower.
The rock building in the foreground is the museum part of the World’s Wonder View Tower, with the namesake attraction just behind on the left. When I was a boy, the entrance to the museum and the tower was a door just to the right of the window in front. Note the wide variety of rocks used in the building’s construction. Note also a person at the top of the tower; I was to later discover that was either my old Flagler high school chum Gary Beedy, or Gary’s brother, Steve. The Beedy brothers, fourth-generation Genoa-area farmers, are strong supporters of the World’s Wonder View Tower’s restoration and happened to be at the tower the same day we were, and we were pleasantly surprised to see them in the tower’s entrance a few minutes after I took this photo. Eastern Colorado comprises about 40,000 square miles (making it about the size of the entire state of Kentucky), but it can sometimes be a mighty small place.
Located 25 miles west of Flagler in Genoa, Colorado (population in the 2020 U.S. Census: 153), the complex that includes the World’s Wonder View Tower was built in 1926 by Charles Gregory and his partner, Myrtle LeBow. Genoa itself was named after the sixth-largest city in Italy and was located near a natural spring that had attracted wildlife, Native Americans, and Anglo-American explorers to this high spot on the arid plains. Gregory had camped in the area in his younger days, and returned to Genoa to build a top-flight tourist attraction that happened to be right next to a new United States highway.
The decade of the 1920s saw huge growth in the popularity of seeing the United States by automobile, which was further aided by the development of the U.S. Numbered Highway System in 1926. Gregory and LeBow originally built a roadside stop at this location that included a gas station, café, and stage for entertainment. The couple later expanded the amenities to include guest rooms and the 65-foot-tall tower structure.
This faded façade is one of my lasting memories of visiting the World’s Wonder View Tower (we just called it “the Genoa Tower,” and no one seemed confused about what we were discussing). The current stewarding organization of the tower complex has focused its efforts on restoring the World’s Wonder View Tower itself, and rightly so.
When completed, the World’s Wonder View Tower, which begins at Genoa’s elevation of 5,604 feet (1,708 m) was the highest point between the Palmer Divide of the Rocky Mountains to the west and the mountains of the eastern United States. The tremendous height of the tower affords simply spectacular views in all directions of the compass.
In 1933, no less an authority than Ripley’s Believe It Or Not confirmed that six states – Kansas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, New Mexico, and, of course, Colorado – could be seen from the top of the 65 tower. Our tour guide on our June 2026 visit, who accompanied our group to the top, used the word “technically” fairly often when she spoke about the opportunity to see a half-dozen states, such as “Technically, you can see South Dakota.” I finally said “You’re throwing the word ‘technically’ around quite a lot …” and she responded with the expected (and I’m paraphrasing), “We just don’t want to wind up in litigation.” Completely fair, I think.
This picture was taken from the east side of the World’s Wonder View Tower. The tower’s original entrance was here on the east side because U.S. Highway 40N (which would be redesignated U.S. Highway 24 in 1936) passed by the tower a few yards to the north. In the 1970s, with the development of Interstate 70 south of the tower, the attraction’s entrance was moved to the south side for easier accessibility. When restoring the tower, the entrance was re-located back to this side of the building. I believe that’s Gary and Steve Beedy still at the top of the tower; I don’t know if they could see the six states of Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, South Dakota, Kansas, and New Mexico, but they could almost certainly see their farm located a few miles north of Genoa. Gary and Steve’s great-grandparents first homesteaded the farm in 1893, 33 years before Gregory and LeBow began building this attraction.Here’s a look at the 65-foot-tall World’s Wonder View Tower from its southwest corner. Jerry Chubbuck built an apartment for his family that connected the building on the left with the one on the right; See Six States LLC restored the two buildings to their original and individual states. The new paint job, based on historic photos of the buildings, looks fantastic.In a frame and behind glass inside the tower’s entrance, here are a postcard (“THE TOWER – – Genoa, Colo. Summit of the Plains”) and a menu from when the tower had a café. Nancy and I both wondered about the provenance of OYSTERS IN SEASON. I wouldn’t pass up a piece of apple pie, though, especially at 10 cents.To the lower left of the menu, here are a couple more historic postcards. The bottom one, which has a Genoa (Colorado, not the capital of Liguria in Italy) postmark of April 7, 1950, is addressed to Mrs. R. Bowers of Downs, Kansas (located in the north-central part of the Sunflower State), and reads: “Arrived at tower at 10:50. Good luck so far. Had a stack” (presumably of pancakes, although they’re not on the menu pictured above) “as big as a 5-layer cake for breakfast, wonder if we could ever be hungry again.”This is a picture of a picture at the tower’s entrance of Jerry Chubbuck (October 22, 1930 – August 4, 2013), who owned the World’s Wonder View Tower from 1967 until he passed away. Jerry, who was born in Arriba, Colorado, about 13 miles east of Genoa, was a fascinating person with wide-ranging interests in archeology, geology, paleontology, Native American cultures, and more. He converted the tower’s overnight guest rooms, café, and other rooms into a winding museum that was sort of overwhelming in its scope. It contained exhibits of thousands of arrowheads, dozens of telegraph and telephone line insulators, mammoth fossils (that he discovered), a taxidermied two-headed calf, World War I and World War II-era military memorabilia, petrified wood samples and other rock collections that went on forever, old and obscure farm and ranch tools and machinery, and much more. Jerry had stories about nearly everything under the museum’s roof, and I have fond memories of Jerry greeting visitors at the front door, collecting one dollar in admission, and then offering to refund their dollar if they could guess what historic artifact (usually some sort of old and obscure farm tool or implement) he happened to be holding in his hand. I’m here to tell you: there were some weird and specialized things manufactured in the old days, and I never, despite Jerry’s patience and hints, got my dollar back from any of my visits. Under Jerry’s stewardship of the Genoa Tower, it became a pretty famous landmark along Interstate 70. My other lasting memory of Jerry, who obviously loved sharing his knowledge with others: after telling you what some artifact was and how to use it, he’d end his sentences with, “Yep. Uh-huh. R-i-i-i-ght.” I think the world needs more people like Jerry Chubbuck.
Jerry passed away in 2013, and the site fell into disuse for several years until some Colorado history aficionados, determined to save the property from fading from the map, formed a limited liability corporation (enigmatically called “See Six States LLC”) to acquire the tower and surrounding buildings and land. See Six States LLC put the property in the hands of a nonprofit group called Friends of the Genoa Tower, the board members of which include Patricia Calhoun, who co-founded the Denver alternative weekly newspaper Westword in 1977 and was, until her pending retirement in the summer of 2026, the newspaper’s editor-in-chief. Troy McCue, another high-school chum of mine, is also a member of the Friends of the Genoa Tower board; he’s now the executive director of Lincoln County Economic Development, which promotes and maintains job creation and business growth in this eastern Colorado county in which Genoa is located.
Much of Jerry’s museum collection was sold at public auction, so the two-headed calf and fossilized mammoth bones and most of the other items have found new homes all around the world (although word on the street is that there is an effort to retrieve some of the curiosities, but you didn’t hear that from me). One item that thankfully didn’t get spread to the four winds is this fine display of barbed wire, exhibited in the tower’s gift shop. Regular readers of this blog will know that I will spare no effort to post pictures of any worthy museum’s barbed wire exhibits and I’m rather unapologetic about it, so here you go.Fortunately, some of Jerry Chubbuck’s hand-painted museum signage, much of which identified the attraction’s many different rooms and warrens, was also withheld from the public auction and is now on display in the tower’s gift shop. I remember seeing some of these signs 40 years ago, and it was good to see them again.There were a lot of museum rooms (I want to say there were at least 20, but my memory may be faulty and it might have been more than that), and they all needed to be identified with signs. The sign at lower right, “Branding Room,” identified the room as containing the “Biggest Collection of Irons in the West.” I have no doubt that it was. Also of note: the signs announcing more than 20,000 “ancient arrowheads of this area” on display and “No Writing on Walls; Fine: $25.”This is a picture of a cover of one of History Colorado State Historical Fund’s annual reports, showing progress of the World’s Wonder View Tower restoration. The project, heavily financed by grants from the state’s historical fund but also with significant contributions from other donors from all around the state and local area, needed more than $3 million in funds for completion. See 6 States LLC and Friends of The Genoa Tower have some really exciting plans for the property, including its usage as an art gallery space and a venue for event functions. The property celebrated its grand reopening in early May of this year. From the standpoint of someone who visited it back in the day and then again this spring, it’s a very impressive transformation that has some great possibilities in front of it.Despite the threat of a $25 fine, many miscreants decided to leave graffiti on the tower’s walls as they ascended to the top. See 6 States LLC, in restoring the tower, made the right choice to leave the graffiti in situ while putting another coat of paint on the walls. This photo was taken from one of the tower’s staircases, looking southwest through a historic window.The United States Coast & Geodetic Survey placed this geodetic marker in the floor of one of the tower’s upper rooms in the 1930s, confirming the latitude, longitude, and, most importantly, the elevation of the World’s Wonder View Tower. Note the name “LeBow” (as in Myrtle) and the year, 1934, in the center of the disk. The USC&GS existed from 1807 until 1970, when it and several other government agencies became part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). People who hike a lot may have seen these markers on trails, used to compile accurate survey information with exact latitudinal, longitudinal, and elevation points on the surface of the Earth. This was the first one I’d seen that was about 50 feet off the surface of the Earth.The government surveyors used this wooden tripod, which they assembled in the tower room containing the geodetic marker, to precisely place the metal disk in the floor of the tower room in 1934. After the project’s completion, they attempted to take the tripod back down the tower’s stairs, only to find that the tripod’s legs were too wide to be transported down the narrow staircases. So, here it has stood for nearly a century, getting a new coat of paint every now and then.When I was a boy, the staircases in the tower, especially this final one leading to the viewing platform at the very top, could charitably be called “rickety.” See Six States LLC reinforced all of the staircases during the redevelopment, and the climb to the top and the viewing platform are rock-steady now. Happily, the group elected to keep the time-worn steps themselves; one wonders how many shoes have been on these steps in the last near-century. Those are Nancy’s shoes at the top of the photo; she and I had been at the top of the tower together a short time after we met when the Genoa Tower was still under the stewardship of Jerry Chubbuck, so she’s a seasoned veteran of the climb. Are you ready to discover what being at the top of the World’s Wonder View Tower looks like? Just follow Nancy!Taken from the top of the World’s Wonder View Tower, this viewpoint looking east-northeast shows the town of Genoa and then (“technically”) the states of Kansas and Nebraska beyond. Genoa’s water tower and grain elevator, both of which are predated by, and taller than, the World’s Wonder View Tower but you probably aren’t allowed to climb to the their respective tops, can be seen in center-right. You’d think that Genoa, Colorado, would be pronounced the same as the city in Italy (“JEN-oh-uh”). You’d be wrong: it’s pronounced “jen-OH-uh.” Now you know and can impress your friends with your newly acquired worldly knowledge, which, come to think of it, I probably should have shared before nearing the end of this posting.This perspective from the top of the World’s Wonder View Tower is looking directly south. On the other side of the cedar trees is Interstate 70, then about 20,000 square miles of Colorado farm- and ranchland, then (“technically”) New Mexico. It was a little hazy on the day of our visit, but the views were still really spectacular.This is a view from the top of the tower looking to the southeast. That’s again Interstate 70 near the horizon and (“technically”) Kansas beyond. Being 65 feet above the ground gives an interesting perspective to your surroundings, such as seeing some parts of the landscape under the darkness of cloud cover. The red roofs are the historic buildings of the World’s Wonder View Tower, where the café and overnight guest rooms, and later Jerry Chubbuck’s museum, were located. Just above them is the back side of the white-and-red “See 6 States” façade shown earlier. The white Ford F-350 Super Duty is Ol’ Blue, the Goddard’s six-wheeled towing unit. Just visible above the tree to the left of Ol’ Blue is a small travel trailer. That’s our first camping trailer, the predecessor to The Goddard, which we called “The Riglet” because bigger camping trailers and motor homes are sometimes called “rigs.” The Riglet is now owned by our friends Mary and Robert, whose company we enjoyed at the World’s Wonder View Tower and then they joined us in the Arriba campground in which we were staying for more fellowship.One last view from the top of the tower: this is looking northwest, so Denver is presumably somewhere on the horizon. There’s a radio tower on the horizon just left of center and most of the rest of the tall structures are wind turbines. The dependable winds available in eastern Colorado are quickly making the area an important location for renewable energy generation. The railroad bed and rails, still in use today, can be seen in the center of the picture, and just to the right of the tree in lower center is a dirt road that is the remnant of the old U.S. Highway 24 which, until the completion of Interstate 70 in the 1970s, brought people by the tens of thousands to the World’s Wonder View Tower. Goodbye until we see each other again, World’s Wonder View Tower! I look forward to seeing what your next hundred years will bring.
Tales of The Goddard 
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