GENOA • On that family road trip across Colorado’s plains in 2013, it would’ve been easy to drive by this no-stoplight town with no sign of any business, other than the grain elevator at the edge of a dirt road and junkyards and abandoned, crumbling storefronts.

But then there was a surprising sight there off Interstate 70, about 85 miles northeast of Colorado Springs. Something resembling a lighthouse.

“It looked like there were people,” Reed Weimer recalls. “There were cars parked up front.”

The people turned out to be mannequins. And the cars were abandoned — display pieces among many, many others that belonged to the eccentric proprietor of the World’s Wonder View Tower.

“He was standing at the door,” Weimer says. “He’s waving at you. You can’t really turn away. My kids were like, Oh, my gosh, this is so weird.”

It got weirder as they walked.

They walked past hundreds of arrowheads before an array of oddities — a stuffed two-headed calf, bison bones, mammoth bones, rooster eyeglasses. They walked through a tight, curving hall walled with painted stones, petrified wood, oyster shells and crystal geodes. The dark passage led to a concert hall with a pump organ in one corner and a vintage projector in another, saddles and horse tack all over. Onward, a dark cafe still kept bright dishes from busy days long ago.

And then there was the main attraction (never mind the old, cobblestone snake pit elsewhere): the tower beside the big, bold sign promising to “SEE 6 STATES.” The stairs led to multicolored observatories, up to the view of Pikes Peak.

The World’s Wonder View Tower was “a funny, strange place full of surprises,” Weimer says. “And we hope it will still be that way.”

Imagine the surprise of him and his wife, Chandler Romeo, if they knew during that stop they’d be back here at the tower today as the new caretakers.

The one back then in 2013, that old man smiling and waving from the door, was Jerry Chubbuck. He would die months later.

By 2017, Colorado Preservation Inc. had placed the tower on its Endangered Places list. Also by then, admirers from afar had rallied — set on seeing a soaring, folksy symbol of roadside Americana not fade away.

“There’s just a subculture of people who like this kind of stuff,” Romeo says.

“And we’re in it,” Weimer says.

Going back to Denver’s underground scene of the 1980s, they are artists who have gone on to revitalize historic buildings around the city. They are longtime friends of Patricia Calhoun, editor of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in 1977.

Calhoun was well familiar with the colorful, nearly century-old story of the World’s Wonder View Tower by the time she heard about it going up for sale.

Her thinking then: “Colorado cannot afford to lose anything else that makes it weird and wonderful.”

Her artistic, preservation-minded friends agreed. As did another friend, Kevin Kearney, an investor who had previous business dealings with Paul Tamburello, the developer and mind behind Little Man Ice Cream. Tamburello jumped aboard, too.

“None of us were afraid of old buildings,” Romeo says with a wry smile. “We should’ve been maybe.”

It’s been almost 10 years since their nonprofit formed to raise the millions of dollars required at the property. This includes not just the tower, but that old concert hall and cafe and whimsical set of structures dating back to 1926. Reopening the tower has been dream No. 1.

And about $3 million later — largely from the state’s historic preservation funds — that dream looks closer to reality.

A dream rises

The hope is for tourists to return next year, coinciding with a celebration of 100 years of tourism here.

“The big stuff is in place,” Romeo says, referring to the most costly work involving water and sewer lines.

Smaller, no less important stuff is also in place. The tower’s interior has been reframed and re-wired. Outside, “That’s all new stucco,” Weimer says, pointing to the walls rising 65 feet. The paint is also new, matching the original, along with the windows.

Weimer is looking out from the top window now. He’s imagining some early hunter or pioneer aimlessly wandering the frontier before reaching this hilltop. “When you were here, you knew where you were,” he says.

Explaining what’s believed to be a deep history of people here, going back to tribes on the lookout for game, friends and foes. As the page turned to a tourist stop, a monument would be erected here, reading: “This is the heart of the wide open range that is immortalized by stories and songs of Indian scouts and cowboys.”

There would be stories of cattle trails and stage stops. Stories of an adventurous spirit who came along in those days. His name was Charles Gregory.

In the 1920s, as automobiles boomed, he would return to open a filling station and later a cafe. And later, by 1930, the World’s Wonder View Tower.

The Genoa Sentinel that year reported “workmen busy on the job … and in every other way is the big tower undergoing a system of finishing that will make it an attractive and extremely interesting place to visit.”

So it was, according to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.” In 1933, the widely syndicated cartoon proclaimed: “It is possible to see 6 states at one time from Genoa, Colorado,” beside the list of Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska and South Dakota.

Other publications heralded “The Lighthouse of the Plains” and “The Summit of the Plains, Where East Meets West.” The tower’s fame further spread thanks to the U.S. Geological Survey reporting the site to be the highest point between New York City and the Rocky Mountains.

Gregory is quoted in another publication, The Tower Bulletin: “This tower should rightly be named the guidepost or gateway to Colorado’s great play-ground and opportunities.”

The bulletin, billed as “a publication for the homeseeker and tourist,” was apparently part of the tower founder’s mission to spur business and draw future residents to Genoa. Gregory was said to be well positioned with his past ventures around the Midwest: “He has seen towns on these great plains born, grow and develop into beautiful cities.”

Upon his death in 1943, Gregory’s obituary was topped by a headline: “Known around the world for unusual tourist mecca.” His wish to be buried by the tower was not realized. But another wish was: His attraction would continue for generations.

The town below

Troy McCue’s grandfather settled to farm in Lincoln County in the ’40s. He came to know the World’s Wonder View Tower like his children and grandchildren to come.

“The Wonder View Tower has always been extremely iconic,” McCue says.

Iconic to both travelers and locals. Friends and families would meet at the old cafe. Some around today remember concerts and dances, proms and class reunions.

The school was not meant to last in Genoa, like all of the businesses around at the time of the tower’s construction: the general store, gas station, pharmacy and bank. The train was stopping back then, making Genoa a hub of Lincoln County.

“Agriculture really got to be the mainstay in the ’30s and ’40s,” McCue says. “Post-World War II, all of our small towns were pretty vibrant, because everybody needed all these services every so many miles.”

Festivities at the tower had a way of breaking the doldrums of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. But the tower was no match for forces to follow.

The school would close, storefronts would shutter, and people would leave Genoa in the quiet, crumbled state of today.

“Like all around America, you start to see urban flight,” McCue says. “Agriculture started gaining technology, and it started taking fewer and fewer families to farm.”

That included his family. But rather than leave, McCue has spent the past two decades trying to grow new opportunities. He’s executive director of Lincoln County Economic Development Corp.

His aim has been to diversify the economy — beyond the Limon Correctional Facility, Colorado Department of Transportation and public school system — and see more businesses, housing and other amenities that keep workers local. About half the workforce commutes outside the county, McCue says.

“The very best outcome,” he says, “is bringing our smaller communities back to vitality.”

Including the smallest: Genoa, home to about 150 people.

Keeping the dream alive

As ever, McCue is eyeing the World’s Wonder View Tower. Sales tax has not been instituted in Genoa, but he’s eyeing that, too.

“If the tower starts pulling in visitors, then maybe you start to see some retail there, maybe a barista and other vendors,” he says. “With the tiny budget (Genoa) operates on, a little bit of sales tax ends up being a relatively significant percent. And then all of a sudden you see street improvements and aesthetic upgrades.”

The kind of upgrades seen at the formerly abandoned Genoa Sentinel office.

There’s a knock on the door now — the young local who has been tending to the yard while Weimer and Romeo have been home in Denver. “She’s come for her pay,” Weimer says with a smile.

Yes, he and his wife have invested in the town beyond the tower, transforming this old newspaper office into a living space. For artist residencies, they’re thinking. And for other workshops and gatherings.

“That’ll all eventually move to the tower, when the tower is ready,” Weimer says.

The vision, indeed, is to bring back that old community space. Some kind of glamping, camping or lodging has been considered. Dilapidated motel rooms flank the complex home to a concert stage inside and outside, on a roof overlooking the old snake pit.

“Imagine you’re going to Genoa, Colorado, to play on the Snake Pit Stage at the World’s Wonder View Tower,” Weimer says with a chuckle.

It’s easy to imagine some quirky music festival here. But before anything new, ownership sounds keen on bringing back the old — something like Jerry Chubbuck’s museum of oddities, for example.

“We’re trying to save the tower, but he’s really the one who saved it,” Weimer says.

Chubbuck is the one who kept watch from the ’60s until his death in 2013. He watched I-70 expand past Genoa, watched people go more than come.

The man before him, Gregory, was known to shout from a megaphone atop the tower, imploring the era’s slow-going cars to stop. That would be no use against the fast highway to come. Chubbuck, rather, would implore with a wave from the door.

From the door Weimer walks out of now, this one exiting the former museum.

“I’ve done my 10,000 hours out here,” he says. And walking through that space in disrepair, through the halls of stone and petrified wood leading to the old stage and cafe in similar or worse states, he’s reminded of tens of thousands of hours still to go.

But the tower is looking better than ever. And Weimer can see the day when his work is done.

“I’ll drive away from here, and the lights are on,” he says, “and the guy at the door is waving at me as I go.”