12/24/2025
Small Town Snippets....Last week’s snippet about Nickerson Farms certainly created a lot of memories judging by the stories you all shared. Today’s read, although not local, should be one to bring more stories out of the recesses of where memories stay. Getting from place to place decades ago meant going by car…it also meant we all saw the same things. The Genoa Tower still stands, though faded and tired, a testament to Charles Gregory and Myrtle LeBow who built it in 1926. (This postcard is in one of mother’s postcard scrapbooks of travel from the 50s through the 80s). The tower is 65 feet tall, and was confirmed in 1934 to be “the highest point between New York and Denver.” Inside the tower were such oddities as a two headed calf and eight legged pig. There were fossils, arrowheads, a gift shop, and stories told by the owner Jerry Chubbock (he and his wife Ester bought the tower in 1967 and charged $1 per person admission). Best of all you could climb the six flights of stairs (nothing safe about any of this) to the top to see SIX STATES. A sign before the first flight stated this was “…not a climb for the faint hearted or flabby…”The tower was quite a tourist attraction until Jerry passed away in 2013 and a public auction happened in 2014.
In the scrapbook I found a flyer with these points of interest: World’s Wonder View Tower Genoa Colorado has…*Largest Imperial Mammoth in the world, approx 75,000 years old, found near Kit Carson Colorado…*20,000 Indian artifacts on display…*Fossil skull, two headed calf, guns, many antiques of all kinds…*See bones and points of kill from 200 bison killed in Eastern Colorado some 8,500 years ago…*”Believe It Or Not” 6 states can be seen from the tower, Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Mexico and South Dakota…*Located on U.S 24 and Interstate 70. Did your parents take visiting relatives here to experience this amazing place? Mine did. If I had been a flabby child it would have been reduced greatly by the number of times I’ve been up and down those frightful stairs! The Genoa Tower was purchased in 2016 by a preservation group. Who is up for stair climbing when (and if) it reopens?
🎹
P. AnnO’Player
(Aka Stacie May)
P.S. Did YOU get the two headed calf???
